An extraordinary mixture of cerebral Brilliance, and limbic blindness. Some of the brilliance....

From saving Paradise, Brock and Parker. Must read. Archive.org

In her study of women's poetry of lamentation, Constantina-Nadia Seremetakis concludes that lament is "a prelude to the staging ofwomen's reentry (as individuals and as a collectivity) into the social order on their own terms."4 it is in other words and assertion of life-giving power in the face of unjust structures that suppress, exclude, violate, and' control life. Telling the truth about Jesus's crucifixion has abiding importance.
To break silence whenever violence is used to shame, instill fear, fragment human community, or suppress those who advocate forjustice is life-giving. Just as Jesus, injohn's Gospel, stood before Pilate and said, "You have no power over me," the Passion narratives defied the power ofcrucifixion to silence Jesus's movement. In doing so, they placed before his movement the choice to tell the truth and live by ethical grace. They said life is
found in surviving the worst a community can imagine, in lamenting the consequences of imperialism, and in holding fast to the core goodness of this world, blessed by divine justice and abundant life.
By the fourth century, the church recited the stories oflamentation every year in the week before Easter. Remembering the sorrows that injustice and violence inflicted, the early Christians filled their churches with images of the life that lamentation allowed to break free, the life of ethical grace, the life ofparadise on earth.