BBC Radio 4 2016-10-21

Good morning. There are times when, quite properly, words fail. When the only response is a stunned, appalled silence and a shared grief. In the sensitive and moving worship programme remembering Aberfan on Radio 4 last Sunday a Minister described having to take parents to the mortuary to identify their children. “They say grown men don’t weep - they do” he said, and described how all that was possible at that time were shared tears. In the months and years ahead different words would come, though one person in the programme said it was only now, some 50 years later he felt able to talk about it.

Perhaps there is one biblical voice in particular that fitted the people of Aberfan at that time and often since, that of lamentation. In Matthew’s Gospel we have a verse which puts some of that searing grief into words. “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” The whole country, indeed the whole world, entered into those feelings at the time and feel for the people of Aberfan still today. The Bible has many voices, deep sorrow as well as joy. There is not just praise but anger as well, sometimes bitter anger, with God as well as with human beings. There is a recognition that sometimes there is no comfort, no consolation to be had. Indeed in the Bible the lament is both a distinctive literary form and a special kind of prayer. Both Judaism and Christianity have incorporated it into their liturgies. But there are other voices too.

There is a work by the wonderful poet Owen Sheers, “The Green Hollow”, arising out of the community at Aberfan which the BBC is broadcasting this weekend. Writing about it beforehand Owen Sheers said that the question that haunted him all the way through was “How to talk about it?” He decided in the end to focus on the whole community both before and after the disaster until today, finding for example in the wives club there, no longer calling themselves young wives, one of the most life affirming groups of people he had ever met. So, as he said, he sought to do justice to the cruelty and ugliness of what happened whilst also discovering the song and prayer in the witness of those who endured the sorrow of the disaster. The Bible too has song and prayer as well as lament. The Bible has many voices and it can help communities and individuals find their own voice for different moods and different circumstances, their own most deeply authentic voice.