Bridge of Lament 2024, Lynchburg, Virginia
An invitation for writers, editors, and pre-readers from Lynchburg, Virginia, and surrounding areas to contribute reflections for our June 19th to July 4th crossing.
At this time of year, many people turn to family or faith traditions for celebration. My own faith tradition starts a new year within the church calendar, focusing on the Divine who took on flesh and began a displacement into the bereaved, broken, and biased lives of Its beloved people. Thirty-three years later, those same beloved people cut down the Divine, just as they cut the tree he would hang on.
I often don't know how to hold in tension the joy I look for from the holidays with the hurt people inflict on each other across the globe, but it's good to remember that displacement is a common theme in humanity's history.
As much as I appreciate the Advent season, there is much to lament, not only about what was done to the Divine two millennia ago, but also the tragic and brutal death, displacement, and terror being inflicted and enacted upon Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Christians, and Muslims today. I often don't know how to hold in tension the joy I look for from the holidays with the hurt that people inflict on each other across the globe.
Though it’s painful, it is also helpful to remember that displacement is a common theme in humanity's history. Just as Israeli, Palestinian, and Ukrainian children and families are displaced and killed right now, we Americans must not forget our story, how white ethnocentrism has justified its place while condoning, to its benefit, the displacement of other ethnicities.
And so I invite readers, writers, and editors to participate as local citizens this year through a bridge crossing. Though it’s half a year away, now is also the time to start forming the 2024 Bridge of Lament, which will provide daily reflections between June 19th and July 4th to help us remember, lament, and seek renewal over the history and legacy of white supremacy1 in our own community. We want the community to be part of helping build our bridge.
As my family decorates for the Advent season, I ponder the symbolism of cutting down a pine tree from the forest, bringing death to a living thing, but also decking it with radiance and crowning it with more glory than it knew before. It's an act of remembrance for me, of looking at an image and reflecting on its meaning and my place within it. That reflection emanates from the historical church calendar, but the histories, meditations, and art of next summer’s Bridge of Lament, within the American calendar, will provide a similar means of remembrance, lament, and even celebration.
If you’d like to know more about how you can participate, click here: Call for Submissions.
However you approach the holidays this year—whether with excitement, ambivalence, confusion, or anxiety—I invite your participation in finding goodness in this place. Join me this Advent season in finding consolation that the Divine experienced displacement, too, and consider being part of next year’s Bridge of Lament.
True lament is not born from trite sentiment that the world is bad but rather from deep conviction that the world is worthy of goodness.2
Kenton Martin, Project Coordinator
Contact me at kenton.j.martin@gmail.com
Arthur Riley, Cole. This Here Flesh, Convergent Books, 2022, pg. 98