In Praise of Shouting

One of my earliest memories took place when I was in kindergarten. We sat in our little chairs around hexagonal tables, gripping fat crayons in our tiny hands as we colored. I was happily working away at my drawing when the boy sitting next to me stole some of my crayons. (In my memory, they are definitely *my* crayons. I’m sure this was true to five year-old me, if perhaps not objectively true). I responded to this outrage by kicking him under the table. He told the teacher, and I was promptly placed in the timeout chair. Meanwhile, the boy got to carry on using my crayons as if they weren’t stolen goods.

Well, I was furious. I could accept that I deserved the timeout for kicking him, but the fact that he got off with no consequence was unacceptable. I sat in that chair and howled at the injustice, yelling at the top of my lungs that IT. WAS. NOT. FAIR. The more my teacher tried to shush me, the louder I hollered. This went on until I was escorted out of the timeout chair and straight to the principal’s office.

So maybe this is why Bartimaeus is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. He hears Jesus is passing by and starts to shout. The more the crowd tries to quiet him, the more he yells. He will not keep quiet about his suffering. And why should he? Why should any of us? Why should we be expected to accept our pain quietly? Why shouldn’t we shout at the top of our lungs if that’s what it takes to express our distress? We belong to a religious tradition that canonized lament, after all. Bartimaeus reminds us that we were not made to suffer in silence.

 Is there pain in your life that you’ve kept quiet? Is there someone else’s pain that you carry? Someone you can shout for? Perhaps now is the time to shout about it — to cry out knowing that One who loves us is near.