The Alphabet of Suffering

“It organizes grief, patiently going over the ground, step by step, insisting on the significance of each detail of suffering. The pain is labeled – defined and objectified.” So says Eugene Peterson, describing the effect of the structure of one of the often neglected Biblical books – Lamentations. The structure is acrostic poetry. Each of the chapters of Lamentations has 22 verses, each beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The 3rd chapter has three verses for each letter. It takes suffering from, so to speak, A to Z.

Peterson, in his book “Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work,” suggests that this repetition of the form has a specific meaning – the one mentioned above which “guarantees that the grief and despair are expressed completely. One of the commonest ways to deal with another’s suffering is to make light of it, to gloss it over, to attempt shortcuts through it. Lamentations provides a structure to guarantee against that happening.”

What would that look like in English? This is not an acrostic poem as much as an alphabetical list, but I think it might be something like this:

A is for awful, agony, apathy, ashes to ashes, AIDS, addicted, abandoned, aborted, abused,
accused, Alzheimer’s, anger, adultery, amputated

B is for back-stabbed, bankrupt, bereaved, beat-up, blasted, bruised, broken, betrayed,
burned, broken, broke up, blind

C is for crushed, cancer, caught, cheated, coma, convicted, coffin

D is for destroyed, debased, dead, dust to dust, delayed, depressed, distressed, down-
sized, disabled, deaf, disordered, diseased, divorced, damned

E is for entropy, embarrassed, exploited, estranged

F is for failed, fear, forgotten, false, funeral

G is for grieved, given up, gone, genocide, guilty, graveside

H is for helpless, hopeless, harassed, holocaust, HIV, homeless, hungry, humiliated, hurt

I is for ignored, incurable, inoperable, imperfect, infertile, illegitimate, irreversible, ICU

J is for justice (looking for), jealousy

K is for killed

L is for loser, lonely, last, lost, least, loveless, listless

M is for maligned, malignant, mute, miscarried, mistake, murdered

N is for never, “no,” nursing home

O is for oppressed, overlooked, obese, ostracized

P is for passed over, prejudiced, paraplegic, poor, PTSD, pain, pornography, paralyzed

Q is for quiet (too quiet), quadriplegic, quit

R is for racism, raped, run down

S is for sin, stillborn, stalled, slandered, stolen, sexually harassed, schizophrenia, stroke

T is for terrified, troubled, trembling, terminal, tortured, tumor

U is for unloved, unattractive, untouchable, unfaithful, ugly

V is for vegetative state, vicious, violence

W is for wasted, war, wrath, wounded

X is for ex-wife, ex-husband

Y is for yearning, yelling

Z is for zero percent chance

This is not an exhaustive list. I don’t know if you have the same reaction I do to a list like this, but I find that there are many of these that sort of wash over me, and some that catch and stick in my soul. At first, it seems like a list of context-less words. But all of these have a context – either in your life or in the life of someone you love. All of these words have a picture – and wouldn’t that be the worst children’s book ever?

Another function of Lamentations, Peterson declares, is to ground suffering in history. In its particular case, the situation was the destruction of Jerusalem and Babylonian exile in 587 B.C. But in a general sense, the idea is “to locate suffering. Names, places, buildings, dates are ways of tethering suffering, holding it within the framework of history.”

Suffering, for the vast majority of us, has less to do with vague existential angst, and more to do with things that happened or are happening in our lives.

A final meaning for the acrostic of suffering is that it also “puts limits upon the repetitions. If there is a beginning of evil, there is also an end to it. Sorrow and suffering are not infinite. Ministry to the sufferer must establish the significance of what is suffered; it must not concede its ultimacy.”

At the end of suffering, or in anticipation of its end, can we find an alternative vocabulary? It might look like this:

A is for adopted
B is for born again
C is for compassion
D is for deliverance
E is for eternal life
F is for forgiveness, freedom, found
G is for grace
H is for hope, help, healing
I is for invited
J is for justice
K is for kindness
L is for life
M is for mercy
N is for new creation
O is for overcome
P is for purified
Q is for quieted
R is for redeemed, reconciliation, resurrection
S is for salvation, sanctified
T is for triumphant
U is for united
V is for victory
W is for washed clean
X is for exodus
Y is for “yes”
Z is for Zion

Are these more context-less words? We can clearly picture the suffering in our lives – it is linked to our history. How will this alternative vocabulary come to us? How do you picture hope? Salvation? Victory? What does that look like?

We may have to wait and see. But I have good news. Whatever particular form redemption takes in your life, it has already begun in history. Victory has a date, a name, and a place. Hope has a picture. We know what it looks like.

It looks like an empty tomb.