Monday's Mourning Ministry - These Arms of Mine ~Otis Redding ~with Revised Lyrics for Grieving Parents

Monday's Mourning Ministry

These Arms of Mine

~Otis Redding

~with Revised Lyrics for Grieving Parents

On Friday's Faith this week, I shared a poem expressing Tommy's laments about longing to hold our daughter in his arms again. The sentiments from the poem culminated into the final sentiment as Tommy was listening to Otis Redding's impassioned rendition of his spontaneously created song, "These Arms of Mine." When Tommy shared his thoughts with me, I teared up, and then the tears began to flow...

We wanted to share this very familiar song with all of you even though we are sure you too have heard it many times. But we have changed some of Otis's lyrics as his were crooned more in the context of romantic love while ours are wailed from out the depths of our broken hearts which house the desperate  and longing love we feel for our-precious-child-who-is-not-here. 

As you replace Otis's words with ours, it is our hope you will picture your own dear child, and use the very soulful groaning of Otis along with the words of a parent's wail of genuine love that has been forced to go "unrequited." 

“Because, if you could love someone, 

and keep loving them, without being loved back . . . 

then that love had to be real. 

It hurt too much to be anything else.” 

~ Sarah Cross, Kill Me Softly

“When I talk about unrequited love, 

most of you probably think about romantic love, 

but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, 

if they are returned at all. 

An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; 

an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. 

But grief is the ultimate unrequited love. 

However hard and however long we love someone who has died, 

they can never love us back. 

At least that is how it feels...” 

~ Rosamund Lupton, Sister

~~~~~

These Arms of Mine

~Otis Redding

~with Bereaved Parents' lyrics

Revised Lyrics for Grieving Parents:

These arms of mine 

They are lonely, lonely and feeling blue 

These arms of mine 

They are yearning, yearning from missing you. 

And if God would let them hold you 

Oh, how grateful I will be 

These arms of mine 

They are burning, burning from missing you 

These arms of mine 

They are wanting, wanting to hold you 

And if God would let them hold you 

Oh, how grateful I will be

Dear God, dear God, oh please please

Just let me hold her, just let me hold her, oh

I'm grieving my baby, my baby who had to leave me, oh

I long to wrap my loving arms around, (around my baby) and hold her tight

O I...I..I...need... I need my baby near me,

O I need to hold, O Lord to hold... Dear Lord, I need to hold... my baby so tight.

~~~~~

Original Lyrics

These arms of mine 

They are lonely, lonely and feeling blue 

These arms of mine 

They are yearning, yearning from wanting you 

And if you would let them hold you 

Oh, how grateful I will be 

These arms of mine 

They are burning, burning from wanting you 

These arms of mine 

They are wanting, wanting to hold you 

And if you would let them hold you 

Oh, how grateful I will be 

Come on, come on baby 

Just be my little woman, just be my lover, oh 

I need me somebody, somebody to treat me right, oh 

I need your woman's loving arms to hold me tight 

And I...I...I need...I need your...I need your tender lips

Video: http://youtu.be/K-FQL-tJ3ic
Pics, thanks to Grieving Mothers
Quotes, thanks to goodreads.com

Monday's Mourning Ministry - Music to Pierce the Heart

Monday's Mourning Ministry

Music to Pierce the Heart

~Lamentations of Jeremiah

I have had experiences in which music has "pierced my heart" … when nothing else could---especially, perhaps, in bereavement. 

I was passionately fond of my mother's sister, my Auntie Len; I often felt she had saved my sanity, if not my life, when I was sent away from home as a child, evacuated from London during the war. Her death left a sudden huge hole in my life, but, for some reason, I had difficulty mourning. I went about my work, my daily life, functioning in a mechanical way, but inside I was in a state of anhedonia, numbly unresponsive to all pleasure---and, equally, sadness. One evening I went to a concert, hoping against hope that the music might revive me, but it did not work; the whole concert bored me---until the last piece was played. It was a piece I had never heard before, by a composer I had never heard of, The Lamentations of Jeremiah by Jan Dismus Zelenke (an obscure Czech contemporary of Bach's, I later learned). Suddenly, as I listened, I found my eyes wet with tears. My emotions, frozen for weeks, were flowing once again. Zelenke's Lamentations had broken the dam, letting feeling flow where it had been obstructed, immobilized inside me.

~Oliver Sachs, in his book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Lamentations of Jeremiah

~Jan Dismus Zelenke

arranged by Thomas Tallis

performed by The Sixteen Choir, 

directed by Harry Christophers

This is part one of his 'lamentations of Jeremiah' which sets to music the two first verses of Lamentations 1.

You will (read on the video and) hear the ensemble sing in Latin which will be translated for you below, with the English just below each Latin phrase or verse:

Incipit lamentatio leremiae prophetae

Here begins the lamentation of Jeremiah the prophet.

ALEPH: Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo!

Facta est quasi vidua domina gentium;

princeps provinciarum facta est sub tributo.

ALEPH: How lonely sits the city that was full of people!

How like a widow has she become,

she that was great among the nations!

She that was a princess among the cities has become a vassal.

BETH: Plorans ploravit in nocte,

et lacrimae ejus in maxillis ejus:

non est qui consoletur eam,

ex omnibus caris ejus;

omnes amici ejus spreverunt eam,

et facti sunt ei inimici.

BETH: She weeps bitterly in the night, 

tears on her cheeks;

among all her lovers she has none to comfort her;

all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,

they have become her enemies.

Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum.

Jerusalem, turn again to the Lord your God.

~~~~~