On Sighs Too Deep For Words
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but that very Spirit intercedes
with sighs too deep for words.
— Romans 8:26
The following was a reflection given for a midweek lenten service at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. You can view a recording of the service here.
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In December of 2020, The New York Times introduced to their readers something they called The Primal Scream HotLine. The tagline reads “Are you a parent who's tired as hell? Then welcome to the primal scream line, where the floor is yours to yell, laugh, cry or vent for a solid minute. Please scream after the beep.” BEEP.
This wasn’t just a joke. They really did have an actual number and an actual recording device. You could pull up the number right now if you wanted to and utter your own scream. Maybe wait until after worship though.
Parents across the country did just what they were invited to do: they called up the number and then they raged, they ranted, they released whatever burden they carried through spoken word to whoever might be listening on the other side. And there WERE people listening. You can read or listen to many of the responses and share in the collective grief of so many parents in a heavy world.
I’m a writer so I love the expression of emotion through words. But honestly, reading through the responses, it was the screams that spoke the loudest to me. They just felt so, alive.
Paul understood this too. In Romans 8:26, he tells us “that very Spirit intercedes for us” when we don’t know what to pray. But it is with what the Spirit intercedes that is the interesting part for me. “With sighs too deep for words,” he writes.
I love using onomatopoeias in writing not just because onomatopoeia is fun to say , although it really is, but because of the way the words bring the story to life. Sigh is such a great example of this. You can hear the emotion in the spoken word. I joked with my pastor that maybe the reflection for tonight was too deep for words and I should have just given one long sighhhhhhhhhhh.
One definition of sigh is described as “a long, deep, audible breath, pushed like wind through trees” or maybe another way to think of it is like screams through a phone line.
The Spirit reminds us we don’t always require words to pray. Breath can be a prayer. Sighs, groans, even screams. I wonder then how many people knew that when they called up the primal scream hotline, that their screams were also a prayer.
There’s another thought I ponder when I read this passage from Paul. Actually this one is a memory.
It was late February of 2020, Ash Wednesday, one of the very last times our church community would come together for months, years for many. We gathered with other young families in the basement of our church that night as a way to invite children into the Lenten practice of contemplation. Below our feet tape lined the worn red carpet, leading us to participate in the prayer ritual of walking a labyrinth. Battery operated candles lit the room, an attempt I believe to teach little ones of the sacredness of this ritual. Darkness is a great way of signaling to children quiet and stillness.
When it was our turn, my two oldest children led the way with my husband Mike behind me holding Leo, as toddlers surely would not respect the rules a Labyrinth requires. Around us were other young families, some behind, some ahead on the path. We were so tightly packed together I imagine it looked like a chaotic mess, which in Covid terms sounds like a luxury doesn’t it. As we moved along, there were many times it felt like we might run into each other. But we didn’t. Our paths turned, and we kept on moving.
I remember feeling grateful that night to have an accessible way to bring my children into Lent, but also realizing this was not my idea of a peaceful prayer time. I was not speaking to God. It was all I could do to keep my kids from racing through like it was a life size Mario Kart track. And as you can imagine telling kids to be quiet and serious only makes them giggle more. Every time the path’s twist and turns put them eye to eye with a friend, suppressed laughter bubbled out of their little mouths like it was alive. And in that large open space their giggles echoed off the concrete walls.
That sound has echoed in the walls of my own mind ever since. It’s what I missed when laptop living room worship felt lacking. It’s what has saved me on this chaotic maze-like path we’ve walked these last two years. It’s what I cling to when I no longer have words but I’ve exhausted all my screams. It’s what I crave when I want to feel alive.
The contagious sound of being together in community with others, of catching the eyes of a friend, of thinking you might be on the verge of a crash and then with great relief realizing that you are safe, you are alive, you are still moving forward.
If sighing is a prayer, if screaming is a prayer, maybe then so is laughter.
May the spirit intercede for you and for me this week
with sighs of screaming but also laughter,
laughter that cannot be contained,
laughter that echoes off of walls,
laughter that pulls us into community,
that brings our stories, and us, back to life,
laughter too deep for words.