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[00:00:00] Morgan Jones Pearson: If you're like me, the word lament is one you've heard and have a vague idea of its definition, but I felt like a whole new world was open to me as I read the new book, Even in the Darkest Hour: Lament as a Path to God. In it, author Michael Huston writes, Far from faithlessness and betrayal, a remarkable feature of lament is that through the process of lament, the one who laments doubles down on the existence of God and the reality of a covenant relationship.
So, what if it really is okay, and even a form of worship, to express when things are hard if we take those things directly to a God we believe in? Michael Huston currently resides in Central Maryland. He received degrees from Utah State University, American University, and Wesley Theological Seminary. of the Mississippi.
He has lived on the East Coast for more than 20 years. He and his wife of 23 years have four children.
This is All In, an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Pearson, and I am so honored to have Michael Huston on the line with me today. Michael, welcome.
[00:01:27] Michael Huston: Hey, thank you for having me.
[00:01:29] Morgan Jones Pearson: Well, I told Michael this in an email before we started recording, but As I have read this book that Michael has put so much time and effort and study into, I felt like I needed the message in the book, and so I'm actually so excited to be able to dig a little bit deeper into this topic as we talk today, Michael.
But my first question for you is, As I read the book, I was so intrigued to know what sparked your interest in this topic of lament. And just to kind of lay the groundwork for those listening, I wondered if you could share with us what is lament?
[00:02:07] Michael Huston: Sure. No, this is actually, I'm glad you're starting with that question because this actually is kind of framing for a lot of the conversation that's going to follow.
If you don't mind me going doing a little bit of personal history because this all plays into it. So I grew up, I grew up in the LDS church. I was, you know, my parents joined when I was very, very little. Um, but you know, so functionally I'd been born and raised in the church. And there came a time when I really was thirsty, hungry.
I needed something. And after a lot of conversation with my wife, I decided to go to Wesley Theological Seminary, which is a Methodist seminary in DC. And so what I would do is I, you know, at the time, you know, my kids were getting older, I was working full time. I would leave work, go to Wesley at night, study there, and then come home.
And over the course of a couple of years, I finished my master's there. One of the courses that I took was an introduction to the Old Testament. Uh, it's a year long course it's required for every seminarian and we got to the wisdom, the wisdom texts, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs. And the teacher that I had was a lady named Denise Domkowski Hopkins, who had written a book about the Psalms.
And she was introducing the Psalms to us. And one of the things that she talked about in the course of this sort of survey was the Lament Psalms. And I will admit that like my only real familiarity with the word lament was like the book Lamentations, which for the most part we skipped, right? Like in Gospel Doctrine, even in seminary, like we kind of like, yes, and then we would move on.
And so I, It was, it was really foreign to me. And so she, she was like, this is lament. Lament is faithfully complaining to God. And I just thought, wait, what does that mean? And so she, she started to unravel this and explain that in the Psalter, in the, in the book of Psalms, which are, you know, just prayers or songs, there were all different kinds of Psalms, which I, I'd kind of known, I guess, but hadn't really sort of unpacked.
And she was like, there are praise psalms that praise God and say how wonderful God is. And there's a bunch of them and you can find them here. And then she would list them off. And she's like, and there are Thanksgiving psalms where they, you know, you say how grateful you are for things and they would list them off.
And she's like, and there are lament psalms. And lament is the way you worship to God from within pain. And she explained that, you know, when everything is wonderful, we praise. When we're grateful, we offer thanks, and when we hurt, we offer mercy. We lament and all of them are ways of worship. They're just different modes.
They're different languages of worship. And that it just, it floored me because I had never, ever heard that in my worldview. Right. And I grew up, like I said, I grew up in, you know, in, in suburban white America, LDS church, right? Like in my worldview. Worship always ended with an exclamation point. That's how it sounded at church.
Everyone talked about how great everything was. And even if you felt bad about it, you always end it with like, but everything's going to be fine. Or, but God has a plan, right? Like everything always concluded with an exclamation point. I had never considered the notion that one could worship through expressions of pain.
Like it just, it didn't, it didn't. It was a brand new idea to me. And when I, when I heard it, I say this in the book, that it felt like I had been, I had exhaled a breath I had been holding for a very long time. Like I didn't realize how much I needed. To be able to say to God when I was hurting, but not say I'm hurting, but I know everything will be okay.
Right? Like not to caveat it just to be able to say, I hurt. And that, that, that expression itself was actually a form of worship. And so Like I said, that, that for me just was, was groundbreaking. Then what happened was later on, you know, I graduated, this was sometime later, I was, I was leading a discussion and we were talking in Sunday school about section 121.
And section 121 starts with six verses of lament. Where he's like, Oh God, where are you? Why are you hiding your face? Why do you let all of these bad things happen? And, and I remember being struck by that. Cause I was like, Oh, I never, I knew it was there. But like whenever I had studied 121, we had always, again, sort of like hurried through those verses and skipped to verse seven, where God starts talking about all the things that are, they know that God's going to do.
And so what I did instead was I focused on verses one through six, and we talked about how powerful it was that Joseph Smith lamented. And then I pulled in some of the lament Psalms and read those. And we pulled in actually Jesus laments from the cross. He, he uses laments, um, as you know, as he's dying.
And we talked about like the power of lament and, and it was really interesting because you could see, or at least it felt like to me, like in the class, people were like, Oh, that's really interesting. And so it was in that moment that I thought it's not just me, like, this is a tool people need. And so I went home and wrote the book.
I mean, that was like that, that's, that's kind of how I got here. And it was, my experience has been that people who have come across this idea, like the LDS folks I go to church with, who have come across this idea, who have read the book almost universally say, I didn't know I could do that. And, and, and I feel like that's both on one hand, really unfortunate, but on the other hand, I'm really glad that they know now.
[00:08:13] Morgan Jones Pearson: Well, I, I completely agree with the fact that it feels like when you understand what you just described as being lament, it does feel like, Oh, like that's okay. Um, because I think that we are so wired within our culture to be optimistic. Sick. And we have reason to be optimistic and hopeful. We have, we talk often about an eternal perspective and I think that that's important, but that doesn't mean that there's not space for some things to be hard.
And I actually just had a conversation this last week with some friends and we were talking about kind of just this being a more difficult season for a couple of us. And one of my friends said that her sister in law often reminds her that That no flower blooms in every season. And so I think it's important to recognize like there may be seasons of lament.
There may be seasons of this optimism and enthusiasm. And like you said, there are places for all those different kinds of worship. Okay. Now that we've talked. Michael, about what lament is, you talk about how there's a specific structure to lament in the scriptures. Can you share a little bit about what that structure is so that maybe people can recognize it more when in their own study?
[00:09:37] Michael Huston: Sure. Yeah. And, and what I'm going to describe is lament as we see it in the, in the Psalms, which again are very structured. So like they're built to be this structured. And what's interesting is once you start to see the structure in the Psalms, then you can kind of transport it outside and go elsewhere.
But, but Lament generally has four, four parts. There's the address, Dear God, there's a complaint. Why is this happening? And in, in, in the Psalter, it's all kinds of different things. Like, why are my enemies prevailing? Why do I feel so sad? How, how come my props are failing? Right? Like all of those things happen.
Then there's the petition, the. Basically, it's a challenge to God to be God. It's like, okay, so if you're God, fix it. And, and then there's the motivation because I need this because I'm hurt because my family's hungry, because if you don't act like God, then maybe they'll think you're not powerful, right?
Like those are the, those are the portions of lament. And again, what I think is fascinating about that is, is it's worship. It's how you worship when you hurt. You go to God and you say, God, I hurt. This thing is happening. Why aren't you acting? And then all of the laments, except one or maybe two, have a thing called the turn where eventually the person who is lamenting is able to turn to praise.
They eventually get there. There's a confession of trust, but I know, right, in the Book of Mormon and 2 Nephi 4. Nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted, right? And then there's this vow of praise. Almost all laments eventually end with praise or thanksgiving. But what I think is interesting is we have to remember that just because That can the sort of the complaint portion of lament and then the turn portion of lament in our scriptures all happen next to each other because it's a compressed text.
We need to remember that in our own lives, those things don't always happen temporarily next to each other. Often there's a big, a big gap between the expression of lament and the turn to praise. And even in, in the scriptures in Psalm 88, there is no turn. It's just lament and it ends in lament. It's actually, it's heartbreaking when you read it because it means that even, even that has a place in worship.
That we don't always have to get to the turn. Sometimes, just the expression of pain is enough. If that's all that we can muster. And I just think, once you start to sort of grab that, oh, it just feels so raw. Like it, there's a, there's a visceral almost reaction that, that happens when you get to that moment.
Um, anyway, I've sort of straight off course, that's the, but that's how, that's the structure of lament. And then we can find that structure in lots of different places.
[00:12:42] Morgan Jones Pearson: Okay, this is so good. I already feel like I'm learning so much. So just to clarify and you talk about this a bit in the book that some might be a little bit confused about the difference between murmuring which we read about in the Book of Mormon or just simply complaining and lament.
So can you explain a little bit about what the difference is between these things?
[00:13:09] Michael Huston: Yes. Yes. And I'm really glad you, you asked that question. It's a question that's actually important to take head on. So, um, probably the most thorough. Examination of murmuring is Neal A. Maxwell's talk, Murmur Not, so everyone can go look that up.
And in it, he describes murmuring with sort of three, three parts. He describes it as a complaint about God intended to provoke others that does not expect a response. That's what murmuring is. It's when you complain about, like, can you believe God did this to us? Look at us now. I mean, you know, we're in a bad spot.
So, and, and then, but there's no expectation that God's either hearing or is going to respond at all. And that's, I mean, that's what you see. I mean, that's sort of like classic Laman Lemuel talking, right? Is the complaining about God intended to provoke without a response. Lament is, is exactly the opposite in every regard.
It is complaint. But it is complaint directly to God and it's not intended to provoke other people. It is, it is intended to petition and it is, it is premised on a rock solid faith that God is both listening and will eventually respond. And I think that when you start to like that differences is actually quite stark because if you think about, you know, again, layman and and Nephi, um, as, as, Sort of opposites Laman and Lemuel were like god did this to us.
It's really awful You should think it's awful too, and he doesn't listen. Anyway, and nephi is like god. Why is this happening? I don't understand. I believe it can be different And those are very different, and the murmuring is just that. Lament is actually a form of worship, but it's because it's directed to God.
And it's premised on faith at its core.
[00:15:08] Morgan Jones Pearson: So murmuring essentially is talking about God behind his back. I think that you did such a great job explaining that. Okay, so you talk in the book about how the point of our life here on earth is not to avoid sadness. And you say that expressing sadness and grief can be an act of faith and worship, which is what we've kind of been talking about up to this point.
But why would you say that experiencing and also expressing sadness and grief is a crucial part of our mortal experience?
[00:15:41] Michael Huston: Yeah, I mean Listen, we live in a world where it seems like the highest good is avoiding pain, that like, that if we just do enough, whatever, fill in the blank, if we run enough or eat well enough or whatever, that we can avoid pain, sadness, tragedy.
And that like, we know that's not true. The best of the best experience pain, sadness, and tragedy, just like the worst of the worst. Like we all go through it. And it was always intended to be this way, right? Modern, like, modern scripture talks about life as an opportunity to be proven, which implies hardship.
And in 2 Nephi 2, Lehi talks about the, you know, the contrasting of the bitter and the sweet, and that, you know, the joy and misery, that without the one, we can't experience in the other. And if we are not willing to accept the fact that we will have sadness. We can't really embrace the reality of happiness.
Like the two are, are so connected that they can't be broken apart. And so rather than try, and I'm not saying that, like, we should go around and try to make ourselves miserable so that we understand what it's like to be happy. But rather than trying to live our life as if the, as if experiencing sadness, grief and tragedy is somehow a condemnation of our failure to live faithfully, which is, I think sometimes what we do, we should live our life, recognizing that we're all just going to have sadness.
And pain and tragedy and that's part of this existence, but that it's okay, partly because like it helps us understand what joy and peace and happiness looks like, but also that God has given us a language of worship for those moments that God doesn't expect us to just like, it's not like pain and sadness and tragedy or something that we must figure out how to get out of in order to worship.
We don't have to avoid it. Michael Card said lament is not the path to worship. Lament is the path of worship. Lament is a, is a mode of worship. And so once we can accept like the reality, once we can accept, I think we can kind of actually do this backwards. Once you accept that there is a language for worship from within pain, suddenly feeling pain, isn't bad.
It just is. And we can worship there too. And so I think that's really a kind of different worldview than the sort of positivity mindset worldview that we've kind of grown to experience in Western North American culture. I mean, that's just the way we tend to view the world.
[00:18:23] Morgan Jones Pearson: Absolutely. And I, I love that you brought up second Nephi chapter two, because one of my favorite parts in the beginning of the book, you talk about the line in the Book of Mormon, men are that they might have joy.
And you write that for Lehi, this was not theoretical, how do you even say that word? Theologizing? Yes. Thank you. I was like, I'm going to put that in there, but I don't know how to say that word. But I loved that you said what you said about this idea of the word might in that scripture and that this for Lehi was something that he was intimately familiar with.
Could you share with listeners what you, what you wrote about that?
[00:19:10] Michael Huston: Sure. Let me take a second to talk about Lehi because that was actually kind of a discovery I made in the course of writing. I hadn't, I hadn't really sort of put this together in the way that I did until then. You know, Lehi's a really interesting cat because like on the one hand, he was the one, he had this vision of the tree of life.
He tasted the fruit. He knew what it felt like. To have God's redeeming love, like, but he also knew at the exact same time, the exact, the anxiety of having children that he was worried about. He knew what it was like to feel God's revelatory power in Jerusalem. And he also knew what it was like to be outcast, right?
Both of them existed at the same time. And as he's close to dying, he talks about how he's filled with great anxiety for his children. At the same time that he feels embraced by God's internal love. And so I think Lehi sort of embodies this duality of happiness and sadness in a way that maybe we don't truly appreciate often.
And, and in his blessing to Jacob in second Nephi two, we get this, this sort of maybe the most famous verse ever, right? Men are that Adam felt that men might be in men are that they might have joy. And we read, you know, in, in, in 1828 English. Might is a, it's the preteritive tense. Like there's grammarians out there who are going to quibble with what I'm about to say.
So just to back, yes, I get it. It's, it's a preterite tense and it was meant to say they have the freedom or power to do it. Like Adam felt that men might be, he is free now to do it. And men are that they might have joy. In other words, they have the power to have joy. All true. But, but I play a little word game talking about the word might.
And in the, in our, you know, the way we use the word might now is to introduce ambiguity, uncertainty. Like if someone says, Did you go to the store and you answer with, I might have the suddenly we don't know if you went right and and I think it's interesting that of all the ways that that scripture could have been, you know, communicated in English will have ought to have must have he uses.
The word might have and I feel like what that what I suggest is that we live in a world of mights that joy is not the inevitable outcome of this existence. Sometimes misery will be there too, and that if we read. Adam felt that men might be and men are that they might have joy to say that somehow just living good enough will mean that you will always be happy.
I think we do ourselves a disservice. I think we should lean a little bit more into the word might and say, you know, men are that they might have joy, but they might not and that's okay. And I think that reading actually. Resonates with the rest of the scripture with the rest of second Nephi 2 anyway, where Lehi is very clear that sadness and happiness, joy and misery go together.
And that to sort of privilege the one over the other is to miss kind of the point of all of it in a lot of ways.
[00:22:12] Morgan Jones Pearson: So, so interesting. Um, okay, I want to, there's so many things from, from this that I want to make sure that we get to. So I'm just going to keep, keep moving. You talking is better than me talking, but you have a whole section in your book about what lament might look like, not only personally, but in our families and our church congregations and even in our communities.
So I wondered, how does this look for you personally? And how does it look? In a community in which you're involved.
[00:22:43] Michael Huston: Yeah, so that's an interesting question. I will admit that, and I'm going to give desert book credit for this one. When I wrote the book, I actually didn't have any real personal examples because I'm not like as a human, I just don't, I don't lean that way.
So they came back and they're like, this is great. You need to provide some personal examples. And I was like, Oh, okay, fine. And it was actually really, really hard because those moments are tough, right? Like talking about lament requires talking about the times when you felt vulnerable and exposed
[00:23:11] Morgan Jones Pearson: Which is hard when that's not your natural personality.
[00:23:15] Michael Huston: Yeah. Well, and especially, you know, again, I was raised to not feel that. And so it's, so it's really sort of pushing against my own kind of predilections. But I, when I, in reflecting back, I think there were a couple of times when I, when I can talk about it in my own life and then in my, in my small communities, but before I do that, let me say that I think a lot of people do this intuitively.
I don't, so I don't know if they know that they do it. Yeah. Where they'll express lament, sometimes they feel bad about it afterwards because they don't know that it's okay to be to lament. But I think when I explain this, I think people will be like, oh, I've done that before. So probably the best example that encapsulates both is 9 11.
I, you know, I know that we have lots of different age groups that listen to this. I was a little bit older. I was in college when this happened. And. For those of, you know, for those of us who remember that moment, like it was like the entire world was thrown into uncertainty. Like I, we literally didn't know if we were going to be attacked again.
I thought that the whole financial system was going to collapse. Like it was, it was incredibly, incredibly scary. In my own life, the way that looked was, was me going to God and basically saying, right in the following in the, in the address complaint petition motivation, like, God, why did you let this happen?
I was, I'm just trying to live my life and graduate from college and have a family. Can't you make this better? Because like, I didn't know what I was going to do. And I asked a lot of hard questions of God because I started to realize that like, all of a sudden I wasn't unique. In fact, the fact that I hadn't experienced that made me unique.
Now I was just more like everybody else all over the world who would experience trauma just like that or worse or closer to home. And so. For me, that was a really sort of moment of me taking my pain to God. But what was powerful about that moment was that we didn't, there were also spaces where we did it together.
I remember going, cause I was in college, they had like a vigil because no one knew what to do. And we went and we sat on, you know, the quad and it was sunset. And, you know, we were up in the mountains and a member of the band. Oh, it's so he played taps and it like echoed through the valley. All of us just kind of sat there and we just kind of hurt together.
And, you know, there was power in that. And no one explained, like, no one was trying to explain why it happened. No one felt compelled to say, but it's okay because God has a plan. Right. It was just us sharing in pain. And it wasn't really, I mean, today, even today, it moves me to tears thinking about it. Like it's, it's, it's a, it was a remarkably powerful moment.
Um, and what I think is interesting is again, like at the time I didn't know what I was doing. Like it just felt. Right to to sort of express these things by myself and to be with people and express them together. Um, but upon reflection, I realized that I was lamenting. That's what I was doing as I was expressing pain to God about what was going on and and in the way in my own way, petitioning God to do something about it.
I think those are those are examples, I think of how it works individually and and in a community. But I want to be clear that like how that works in individual's lives in a different communities can really vary because like trauma looks different for different people and tragedy. You know, we all experience things differently.
And so there isn't really any 1 way or 1 thing about, you know, to lament or about which we should lament. It really is like, what what hurts us or our communities. That is the subject from which we can build. Mhm. Lament as worship.
[00:27:12] Morgan Jones Pearson: I love that example that you gave because I think it hits home for like you said there are different ages that listen to this and I'm sure that we have a younger audience who doesn't remember that but I think many listening will remember that and how their own lament looked in that moment. You discussed that there is a danger in refusing to lament.
I feel like, like we've talked about, so many of us try so hard to remain optimistic and to be positive, and we don't want to seem like we're complaining. But why is it important to lament?
[00:27:50] Michael Huston: Yeah, so I, I think the most grounding way to talk about this is to talk about it in a, in a, as a, in a more intimate relationship that maybe we're familiar with here.
So, with my wife, there are times when I need to go to her and say to her, you're wonderful. Like, you're the best thing ever. You're the bees knees. I can't imagine life without you. And there are times when I can go to her and say, I am so thankful for all the things you do for me. And there are times when I need to be able to go to her and say, this thing, it hurts.
And I think in, in, in the context of our earthly relationships, like that feels right. Because if we are never able to say to our spouse or our significant other, our partner, our kids, whatever, if we're ever, we're not able to say. I hurt. Then what's happening is the relationship is never really open.
You're always holding something back. You're keeping something, um, behind a wall. And if we want to have the kind of authentic covenant relationship that is re required, right? Jesus says like, this is life. Eternal salvation is to know God. If we want to know God. We have to be able to have all of us out there, not just like the pretty parts and not the parts that sound good, like all of us.
And, and we have to be able to believe, to trust, to have faith, whatever the right verb is, that God accepts that. And I think if we refuse to lament, We are both holding something back and, and lacking an element of faith. I don't know if that's too hard to say, uh, maybe that feels too pointed, but if, if we don't have the trust in God that we can say how we feel, like, how can we expect to build the type of relationship that, that, that can carry us through the eternities?
And so I think if we refuse to lament. We are, we are stopping our own relationship building with God. We are, we are hindering our own spiritual progress. Lament isn't just a nice too. It's not just like an accoutrement of faith that we can put on. If we need it, lament is part of what covenant living looks like.
Just like faith and things just like praise and Thanksgiving are it is part of the package and I can't imagine that we would ever say Well, I just don't praise God because that's just that's just not in my thing, right? Cuz I've got that it feels nonsensical to say that it is just as nonsensical to say But I don't lament like that's just not my thing because it's, it's, it's part of the deal.
It's part of what it means to have a relationship with God.
[00:30:46] Morgan Jones Pearson: I think as you were talking, I was thinking, you know, what are the deepest and most rewarding relationships in my life? And they're those with whom I have. Shared, not just the happy moments, but sad moments as well. Um, and so that makes a lot of sense to me.
You discussed Michael, how lament is a sacred space. What is it that sanctifies the space in which we lament?
[00:31:13] Michael Huston: Yeah, I, I, this I think is really interesting. We, we sometimes use the word sacred in a way that I think Is not always helpful. Sometimes we use the word sacred to mean like the most spiritual or the, the bestest, right?
It's, it's the thing that's cooler than the other things. There's like the sacred and then there's everything else, but in, in ancient Israel, right? Like, if you had to do a grain offering, you would, you would go out and you would gather your grain and some portion of it would be taken to the temple and some portion of it would be kept at home.
The portion that was taken to the temple. Became sacred. The stuff that was left at home became profane. It's not that like one was better than the other. It's not like these stocks of grain were the best stocks of grain and these were the worst. It was just one was given to God and one wasn't. That's, that's what, that was the difference.
What lament does is it, it allows us to take the thing we already have, which is our pain, our anguish, our sorrow. And it allows us to take them and, and proverbially package them up. And then take them to the altar and in the, in the act of doing that, in the act of taking our pain and wrapping it up and taking it and handing it to God, the pain becomes sacred.
It becomes an offering, it becomes a space of sacrifice. Because now we are taking a thing that was ours and we were, we are giving it to God. And I think that is what I mean when I say that lament can become, in a sense, it is the most sacred of offerings. Because it, like you said, it is, it's those moments when we are most vulnerable, most exposed, most uncertain, when our legs are the shakiest.
We're taking that and we're saying, God, this is all I have left is just this and then you give it to God. And in my mind, like, there is no more special thing that we could give God. There's nothing more sacred than giving God the things about which we are most uncertain about.
[00:33:36] Morgan Jones Pearson: That's beautiful. I also, it made me think I just taught Sunday school yesterday and we were talking about Enos and we talked about how there are multiple prayers in the scriptures in which somebody designates a spot to go and pray to God.
And so whether it's Enos going into the forest or Joseph Smith going into the sacred grove and it's like, well, what, what is it that makes those spaces? Sacred. This, the sacred grove was not sacred until Joseph went there to pray. And so I think to your point, like it is, we, it's, it's up to us to designate these things as for God and to make them holy simply by our desire to seek him in that space.
You asked the question at the end of the book, what comes after lament? What have you found comes after this?
[00:34:32] Michael Huston: Yeah, the, I sort of joke in the book that like the whole point is that we don't know what comes after lament because what comes after lament is newness. It's, it's, and there's an anticipation of deliverance and then there's newness, but we don't know what the newness is going to be.
And in fact, we probably can't even predict. I use, you know, one example that I use is, The Israelites leaving Egypt, right? They didn't know they were going where they were going. They just knew it was going to be something different. And where they ended up was, it was a place they could not really have imagined.
Not really because of the world in which they came in, they were slaves. And to imagine coming to a place where there were already trees planted in places for them to live. Like that's, that's a really dramatic form of deliverance that they probably couldn't have imagined. I think another, maybe the most.
Stark example is the resurrection where when Jesus died, the newness that resulted from his resurrection was not like a reinsertion into his old life. He didn't just go back to being a Nazarene who, you know, someone from Nazareth who was 33 years old that was cruising around, right? He became something, something more.
There was a newness, a new way of living. And I think that's That's that's where lament leads is into a new way of, of being, um, for me, probably the most stark example comes with, I mean, honestly, my own faith, I went through a time when, and I talked about this sort of very briefly at the beginning where for me, I needed something.
That I, I wasn't, I didn't have access to, and, you know, sort of like all of my, I describe all in the walls of my faith kind of started to crumble. And the material was out there and it was still fine material, but I figured out that I was built the wrong way. And I had to go back and rebuild my house. And the house I built is not the house I would have imagined in the beginning, but it's the right one now.
And it's, it's, it's a newness that I didn't anticipate. Like, it looks very different than I, than I could have imagined. And I think. That's the thing about lament is in the moment of lament, we express through pain and what comes after is a newness that we don't know what it will look like. But we have been promised that there is a newness.
And it's sort of that, you know, I, I heard, I think Pope Francis actually said it, that hope is an anchor we throw into the future. That's kind of what lament offers. It's the anchor we throw into the future and where that will guide us is sometimes a little uncertain, but, but it's always going to be good.
[00:37:06] Morgan Jones Pearson: That's very well said, um, speaking of faith, I thought it was so interesting that at the end of the book. It feels like the book is essentially over. And then you have one last brief note about lament and in quotes, faith crisis. Why was this important for you to include?
[00:37:29] Michael Huston: Yeah. So some of this, well, first of all, I, and I say this in the book, I'm not a big fan of the phrase faith crisis, but I mean, it's, you put it in quotes and it's right.
I mean, because it means lots of things to lots of people, but it's a useful shortcut. To, you know, signal like the notion that a lot of people who are members of the church are choosing to affiliate with other churches and no church at all. The reason I thought it was important is because I feel like not for everybody, like I don't want to make global statements, but I feel like for a lot of people, the types of things that lead to those kinds of moments of uncertainty, when we're faced with them, the choice is sometimes presented, maybe not this starkly, but sometimes this starkly as, well, you just need to have faith.
Or you need to be, or, or you're faithless. It's just sort of like this, either, or as if somehow praise Thanksgiving, right. Is, is, is in a sense, really the only answer. And I find that that's misguided because what it presumes is that you can't have a relationship with God from the midst of uncertainty. At least that's what it seems to presume to me.
And so, but, but that is exactly what lament is for lament is for moments of uncertainty, and I feel like. If folks who are in that sort of like Moment of uncertainty of unsettledness where things feel incoherent realize that there is still a way and a language to hold to God. There's a way to talk to God from within that uncertainty that there are, there is a lot of pain.
That could be channeled differently. And I don't mean to say that, like, the purpose of lament is to keep people in the church, because that's not what it's for. But it's a, it's a spiritual tool that people just don't know about. And I feel like a lot of people who are in those moments of, like, really deep pain and sadness, that sometimes accompany a faith crisis, would benefit.
From the ability to say out loud to God, God, I don't understand. Why is this happening? Like, I feel like that that's important to be able to say. So I guess it was in some ways, maybe that's a little more, you know, closer to home because I've seen my friends and others, you know, go through those moments.
And I feel like. Lament could have been a valuable tool for them.
[00:39:52] Morgan Jones Pearson: I just have one last question before we get to our all in question. One last quote that I wanted to touch on from the book, you say, our spiritual heritage is one of a God who is as open to songs of praise as to songs of lament. God is strong enough to be our God in all seasons of our life.
I, it's probably because of that whole no flower blooms in every season that this quote stuck out to me because I've had that replaying in my mind over and over again, but I love this idea of a God that is a God of all seasons. I wondered for you in your own life, how have you seen that, that God is a God of all seasons?
[00:40:36] Michael Huston: Yeah, I mean, listen, God is bigger than the boxes we build. And in my life, it is certainly true that I have felt God when I've been in a good place when I've been praising and offering Thanksgiving and like been in those moments of real elation. Like I have felt God in those moments. I, I think I can say with, with real I mean, I think it's, I'm trying to reflect on this.
I think it's true that like the times when I have felt God's presence the most, like the most sort of like powerful acknowledgement that God is. Has come when I had faith enough to be honest with how I felt in moments of pain. And it didn't make the pain go away and it didn't fix the situation. Like, but there was something about being able to say out loud that I hurt.
That really, for me, taught me what divine presence felt like. So that's a little bit of a non specific answer, but You know, there's a lot of experience behind it.
[00:41:58] Morgan Jones Pearson: No, I think that's perfect. And it calls to mind for me, similar experiences. So I'm sure it does that for everyone. My last question for you is what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ?
[00:42:14] Michael Huston: I think I mean, this may not be terribly surprising based on the conversation we just had for me for me to be all in is sort of characterized by like this notion of radical relationality. It is to be all in is to be in a relationship. It is to be connected to God. And the way that I connect to God is through other people and through creation.
It's that's how I tie in. So to me, to be all in is to be in a relationship. That's what it looks like is relationship.
[00:42:49] Morgan Jones Pearson: Michael, thank you so much. This has been Such a good Good discussion and and one that I I will be thinking about for a while So I really really appreciate your time and I also appreciate the the time that you put into writing this book For all of us, so thank you very much
[00:43:07] Michael Huston: Thanks for having me.
I appreciate the really good questions.
[00:43:13] Morgan Jones Pearson: We are so grateful to Michael Huston for joining us on today's episode. You can find Michael's book, Even in the Darkest Hour: Lament as a Path to God in Deseret Bookstores now. Thanks to Derek Campbell for his help with this and every episode of this podcast. And thank you so much for listening. We'll look forward to being with you again next