The Blues as Contemplative Opening

"The moan is the birthing sound, the first movement toward a creative response to oppression, the entry into the heart of contemplation through the crucible of crisis..." -- Barbara Holmes

Betye Saar, Frieze

This moan, I think, is where the blues comes from. The blues as an unstoppable cri-de-coeur, the heart breaking within the pain as God seeps through the cracks -- Christ who weeps with us -- Jesus who is close to the shattered. With that moan Spirit flows through and widens the heart  in ways that cannot happen through our small separate self willing it. Something beyond ourselves enters in through the wailing, silent or sung, enlarging our capacity for compassion and the broader reaches of love and care that stem from that. We cannot do this on our own. But we can join our moans with the moans of others, invoking the God of our weary years, and be brought to a strength and a "peace that passes all understanding." We might find that we are carried--or graced with a mysterious capacity to carry--"for my yoke is easy and my burden light." (Matthew 11: 28-30).