Songs of Hope and Hopelessness: Sufjan Stevens as a Model and Means of Verhey’s Compassion Looking Heavenward
Brandon Oddo, BS, and Lily Weir, BA, Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC and Briana Oddo,MSW,Boston College School of Social Work, Boston, MA
In his album Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens invites listeners into the radical and intimate witness of his suffering—intricately interwoven with hopelessness and hope. The album charts the death of his mother as an event whose impact stretches across time as he traces the simultaneous nostalgia for and foreshadowing within his childhood memories, the ecological correlates of disaster in his home state, the destructive impulses his grief thrust him into after the death, the rich history of hymnal lament that he continues, and—most importantly—the gravitas of death when revered as an event of eternal significance in his Christian tradition. The abundant particularity of his work is precisely what universalizes his lament. By baring his innermost desolations and praise in a delicate but determined voice, Sufjan becomes the sufferer who reveals himself—in turn, revealing something about the divine.
This movement of lament that begins with the sufferer’s profoundly intimate story and then partakes in the grander narrative of human suffering is similarly seen in Allen Verhey’s notion of a compassion that looks heavenward. Verhey describes suffering as the distress that results from a threat to an individual’s “intactness”—that is, suffering can fracture one’s sense of identity. Expressive compassion is the good work of accompanying a patient in the reconstruction of their sense of self. The sufferer is centered as the hero of their own story. The patient’s personal story is also situated within the communal lament of their religious tradition. A congregation that sings songs of lament indeed helps hold the space for pain, doubt, and anger. Crucially, they also bear hope—especially when the sufferer has none. When one’s own story is embedded in a larger religious narrative and community, they are brought into the space that can bear hopelessness and hope alike in solidarity with the sufferer. Further, within Verhey’s Christian tradition, relating to the suffer is likewise relating to Christ. By looking lovingly and attentively upon the suffering patient, one’s gaze is also drawn heavenward to a G-d who shares in our suffering.
In medical settings, responses to the suffering of patients often risk further isolating and fracturing their identity. Moreover, holding both tragedy and beauty within a religious community is immensely challenging. Sufjan’s music invites listeners to cherish and sit within the intimacy of his lived experience as he reconstructs his identity in the midst of suffering through grief. He is also unabashedly honest both in his despair and his wonder. As an artist who makes manifest the powerful conviction of Verhey’s compassion that looks heavenward, Sufjan serves as a contemporary psalmist whose songs are both a means for communities of listeners to participate in communal lament and a model for individuals and those who care for the suffering to foster narratives that are grounded in each person’s unique relationship to pain, illness, and loss. By listening to Sufjan’s story or following his lead in attending to our own stories, medical and religious communities can come to lament and praise in the hopelessness and hope to be held in times of suffering.
This movement of lament that begins with the sufferer’s profoundly intimate story and then partakes in the grander narrative of human suffering is similarly seen in Allen Verhey’s notion of a compassion that looks heavenward. Verhey describes suffering as the distress that results from a threat to an individual’s “intactness”—that is, suffering can fracture one’s sense of identity. Expressive compassion is the good work of accompanying a patient in the reconstruction of their sense of self. The sufferer is centered as the hero of their own story. The patient’s personal story is also situated within the communal lament of their religious tradition. A congregation that sings songs of lament indeed helps hold the space for pain, doubt, and anger. Crucially, they also bear hope—especially when the sufferer has none. When one’s own story is embedded in a larger religious narrative and community, they are brought into the space that can bear hopelessness and hope alike in solidarity with the sufferer. Further, within Verhey’s Christian tradition, relating to the suffer is likewise relating to Christ. By looking lovingly and attentively upon the suffering patient, one’s gaze is also drawn heavenward to a G-d who shares in our suffering.
In medical settings, responses to the suffering of patients often risk further isolating and fracturing their identity. Moreover, holding both tragedy and beauty within a religious community is immensely challenging. Sufjan’s music invites listeners to cherish and sit within the intimacy of his lived experience as he reconstructs his identity in the midst of suffering through grief. He is also unabashedly honest both in his despair and his wonder. As an artist who makes manifest the powerful conviction of Verhey’s compassion that looks heavenward, Sufjan serves as a contemporary psalmist whose songs are both a means for communities of listeners to participate in communal lament and a model for individuals and those who care for the suffering to foster narratives that are grounded in each person’s unique relationship to pain, illness, and loss. By listening to Sufjan’s story or following his lead in attending to our own stories, medical and religious communities can come to lament and praise in the hopelessness and hope to be held in times of suffering.