“O that my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
for the slain of my poor people!”
(Jer 9:1 NRSV)

Housing bust, record foreclosures, out of control gas prices, job losses, major financial institutions going under. Really, in my 40 years I’ve never seen anything like it. This was a topic of discussion with my students before our class last night, and I made the statement, “It seems as if we’re nearing a full blown depression.”

Very quickly, one of my students shot back, “Well, you’re the only one to admit it!”

When I asked her what she meant, she said, “All of the politicians on television refuse to even admit that we’re in a recession when everyone knows we are.”

She’s right of course. This election year I’ve been on the email lists of both Barak Obama and John McCain. Obama sent out an email today referring to the situation as “our financial crisis.” Yesterday, McCain referred to “these tough times.” Bush says we’re in the middle of an “economic slow down.” No one wants to use the “R” word and certainly not the “D” word. This is an election year, after all.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines recession as “a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters” (a depression is simply defined as “a long and severe recession in an economy or market” ). So I don’t know if the situation meets this actual criteria but I know times are difficult economically, and I don’t yet see any indication that the immediate future is brighter. I’m generally not a doom-and-gloomer, but I really believe we should be prepared for potentially worse days ahead.

Flipping through the pages of the Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible, my eyes happened to stop on the note accompanying Jeremiah 9:1. As you read the words below substitute in your mind the word politicians in place of kings.

“Grief is a prophetic activity. Kings put a happy face on everything, tell the people this is the best of all possible worlds and they never had it so good. It takes a truthful prophet to have the guts to grieve societal disaster. Tears are a sign of relinquishment, a letting go of false hopes and false gods, an admission that we are in sad shape and need of deliverance. The community that is faithful to the truth is always the place where we go to grieve, where we are given the space and permission to weep. Grief is not the final prophetic act, but it may be the first--an honest admission that we are a people who need a God who loves and saves. Tears are thus a prelude to openness to the possibility of divine deliverance.”