Anathea Portier-Young AYR Interview

“On the Old Testament as a Resource for Healing and Lament” was a promo video by Anathea Portier-Young for the 2011 After the Yellow Ribbon conference at Duke University. Interview by Logan M. Isaac, videography by Pilar Timpane.

Transcript

 I think that a really helpful way of thinking about the Old Testament scriptures is as testimony as witness. I think there cannot be any healing from the wounds of war and the terrors and horrors of war until we speak them. As individuals and as a community and no healing until we hear them. And the Old Testament scriptures really help us as a community and as individuals to speak and hear the wounds and horrors of war. To heal these wounds requires that they be acknowledged in a space that is safe and supportive. They must not be denied and they must not be rushed past.

 One place to start is with confession. So a very important part of giving testimony is making space for confession for the individual and for the community.

 There are wonderful penitential psalms in the Psalter that give a script for confession when it is too hard to make up the words. We have the stories of David. In the books of Samuel and Kings we see in David, a leader in the community who is also a warrior who is also a sinner. We're told in Chronicles that he has blood on his hands.

 We also have resources in the Psalms and in the Book of Lamentations for individual and communal lament. It is so important  to be able to give voice to the pain when you don't have the answers. The most common type of Psalm in our Psalter with 150 Psalms overwhelmingly, is the lament, which could also be called the complaint.

The Book of Lamentations has another name in Hebrew. It's the book of How;  How did all this happen? How did I experience this? How do I hold this? These prayers, these songs let the individual and the community give voice to those questions. We also have the prophetic books in the Bible; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Nahum.

These are books written primarily in poetry. Poetry has a more immediate effect on the senses than prose. And these prophetic books in their poetry give voice to the horrors of war with an immediacy that can mimic the experience of soldiers. And testify, portraying the sounds and sights and smells of war, heaps of bodies, clatter of wheels and weapons, bloody wounds, the shame of captivity or defeat.

These are the obvious, visible wounds of war.

 The blessing that we have in these books in the Bible  is that any who claim these books as scripture can hold in their hands this testimony and know that this book contains all the horrors that cannot always be spoken. All the horrors that a soldier knows are in this book.