Over the past several weeks I have been working through the second draft of my current sabbatical book project; as I completed each chapter draft I had Jeanne, who is my \u201cgo to\u201d reader for everything, to give me her impressions. After finishing one chapter she said that she liked it overall, but thought that I should rework the first section because it was \u201ctoo depressing.\u201d I made the suggested changes, replacing the opening section with something more upbeat and deciding to move the depressing part to today\u2019s sermon.\u00a0 Jeanne, who manages to be on the road every time I am giving a sermon, \u00a0got on the Amtrak early one Sunday morning a couple of years ago, beginning two weeks of work-related travel. Bummed out, I decided to head south for church an hour and a half early in order to spend that extra time in the River\u2019s Edge coffee shop just down the street,\u00a0reading and doing my introverted thing. My text for the morning was Herodotus\u2019s\u00a0Histories<\/em>, the primary text for the coming week\u2019s Development of Western Civilization freshman seminars. Herodotus is considered to be the first true historian, but historian or not, he\u2019s a great story-teller. His \u201chistory\u201d is often page after page of anecdotal tales about strange and distant lands, stories\u00a0based more on second-hand rumor than direct observation. Consider, for instance, his description of a certain Thracian tribe\u2019s practices at the birth of a baby:<\/p>\n When a baby is born the family sits round and mourns at the thought of the sufferings the infant must endure now that it has entered the world, and goes through the whole catalogue of human sorrows; but when somebody dies, they bury him with merriment and rejoicing, and point out how happy he now is and how many miseries he has at last escaped.<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s a sixth-century BCE version of \u201clife\u2019s a bitch and then you die,\u201d codified into the very fabric of a culture. The first stop on Jeanne\u2019s two-week travels was to visit New Jersey briefly to help celebrate the first birthday of her great-niece with her family.\u00a0 But if brutal honesty were the rule of the day, perhaps her Emma\u2019s first birthday celebration\u00a0should<\/strong>\u00a0have been so marked. The ancient Greeks, Herodotus included, understood better than any group of people before and perhaps since the often tragic tension that lies just below the surface of human life. In Aeschylus\u2019s\u00a0Oresteia<\/em>, the trilogy of plays that was the\u00a0previous<\/strong>\u00a0week\u2019s focus with my DWC\u00a0freshmen, we encountered the horribly messy history of the house of Atreus, undoubtedly the most dysfunctional and f\u2013ked up family in all of literature. In the midst of this powerful and tragic work, Aeschylus occasionally reminds us that tragedy and pain is not just part of myth and legend\u2014it is an integral part of the human condition. We must, Aeschylus writes, \u201csuffer into truth.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not as if we need regular reminders of how a seemingly benign and beautiful world can turn dark at a moment\u2019s notice. Just a year ago, on the day before Thanksgiving, a colleague at Providence College was killed far too soon in an automobile accident.\u00a0 Over the years I had dozens of interactions with Siobh\u00e1n both in person and via email, sometimes asking for help with something that a two-year old probably would know how to do, other times asking for advice concerning what new technology might be useful and user-friendly for the faculty in the program I direct. She always had the answer, delivered both in language that I could easily understand and without a hint of condescension or impatience (even though I undoubtedly deserved both). Often Siobh\u00e1n provided solutions for the next eight problems to follow that I didn\u2019t even know about yet. She was gracious, creative, generous, funny, and had a smile that lit up every space she entered. I pride myself in responding to emails quickly, but Siobh\u00e1n was the fastest I have ever encountered. I once complimented her on her immediate helpfulness; she responded \u201cThat\u2019s because I like you!\u201d I asked \u201cWhat do you do to people you don\u2019t like?\u201d \u201cI make them wait a week.\u201d<\/p>\n During the days and weeks after Siobhan\u2019s death, everyone on campus wasin shock. How could such a wonderful person have been killed in a freak accident while still in her thirties? On the Friday of the first week after we returned from Thanksgiving Break, a memorial service for Siobhan was held on campus. As I settled into my seat in the chapel with the several hundred persons who closed offices and cancelled classes in the middle of the day to honor Siobhan and celebrate her life,\u00a0 If you are not familiar with Lamentations, it\u2019s probably just as well\u2014it is undoubtedly the most depressing text in the Jewish scriptures, perhaps anywhere. I came face to face with it when on sabbatical several years ago. Of the many liturgical celebrations I participated in at St. John\u2019s Abbey in Minnesota, the most striking is the Good Friday morning prayer service. At 7:00 in the morning, the service sets the tone for the day as a solitary monk chants the entire book of Lamentations, a litany of five poetic dirges over the destruction of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n Traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, the tone of the poems is bleak: God does not speak, the degree of suffering is presented as undeserved, and expectations of future redemption are minimal. In Psalm 129 the Psalmist writes \u201cPlowmen have plowed my back and made their furrows long\u201d\u2014Lamentations is page after page of that sentiment. Except for a passage right in the middle of the book I had forgotten about, a place where for a moment Jeremiah comes up for air\u2014the very passage read at Siobhan\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n![\"amtrak\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2015\/12\/amtrak.jpg\")
<\/a>Don\u2019t worry\u2013it gets better at the end.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Something tells me that Emma\u2019s first birthday was not marked with a recitation of \u201cthe whole catalogue of human sorrows.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>I\u2019ve told people frequently since that time that if, out of the hundreds of faculty and staff on campus, I made a list of those persons who everyone liked and respected, Siobhan would have been at the top of the list. Truth be told, she might have been the only name on the list. Siobh\u00e1n was the college\u2019s Instructional Technology Development Program Coordinator, a position that put her in charge, among other things, of bringing the faculty into the twenty-first century technologically (after guiding them first through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries).<\/p>\n<\/a>I noticed in the program that the Old Testament reading was from Lamentations. \u201cThat\u2019s appropriate,\u201d I thought. \u201cAt least there\u2019s nothing in Lamentations that will give us the unwelcome advice that we should not feel the devastating loss and sadness that we feel.\u201d<\/p>\n