Higher Than Me

Over these last few months, I have been thinking a lot about grief. Also about the blessings that lie within the tears. I believe that there is beauty for ashes that we sometimes never find because our society is so afraid to mourn.

In biblical times, communities came together in their grief. Weeping was loud and passionate. People sat together for many days after a bereavement. They held and comforted one another. Grief was a process to be shared, not a problem to be solved.

In Middle Eastern societies today, people still come together to mourn collectively after a bereavement. In Jewish communities, the bereaved family “sits shiva” for seven days, welcoming guests into their home to join them in their grief.

I remember in our early years in Israel, when we lived in a predominantly Druze Arab village on the top of Mount Carmel, the communal grief that I witnessed in some of the more traditional, less “educated” families felt the closest to how I imagine grief was in biblical times.

I remember on a number of occasions, sitting in a room full of traditionally dressed Druze women, drinking bitter coffee from small white china cups as they grieved the loss of a father, mother, husband, child, cousin or friend. Sometimes these rooms were filled with loud wailing. Collective cries of grief and loss.

Once or twice, my eyes welled up with tears during these communal times of grief. But I never wailed. I felt far too self-conscious to join in such a public display of raw emotion.

Since 7th October 2023, there have been many times that I have longed to wail. More than once, I have woken up crying in the night. I remember quietly sobbing in my seat on the Saturday after the October massacres as our plane took off, evacuating us from the war zone that our country had become. Over the last year and a half, I have grieved quietly and privately in a modest and restrained sort of way. But I know that there is a much deeper cry inside me that I don’t quite know how to release.

It makes me wonder how and when we all became so civilized that strong and passionate displays of emotion became taboo.

Today, we measure teardrops in test tubes to determine whether natural sorrow has crossed the line into sickness. If our sadness is too deep or the ocean of tears takes too long to dry up, we are given a medical label that requires treatment rather than the healing warmth of human touch.

When I look at the textbook definitions of mental illness – the detailed descriptions of how sorrowful a person should be, and for how long, before they qualify for the label of clinical depression – or how erratic their behaviour must be before it is safe to say that they have lost their mind – it makes me wonder whether the person who penned these medical pages had ever experienced horrors on the scale of October 7th.

I am not saying that mental illness is not real, nor that its symptoms are not debilitating. What I am saying is that what we describe as mental illness is very often a normal and understandable response to sorrows and traumas that exceed our ability to cope. 

Healing from these sort of hurts needs to happen together, within communities, with friends, family and loved ones around. We need to share one another’s grief and then the load becomes lighter. Just the very act of being together makes the valley of the shadow of death feel less frightening and cold.

In Israel – as in many other countries around the world – the mental health system is on its knees. There are not enough psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists to meet the huge and overwhelming need. Millions of people are hurting on the inside and don’t know where to turn.

Yeshua said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). The sort of comfort he was referring to was not about trying to solve the problem of grief or “fix” the bereaved person. It was not about trying to cheer them up or cajole them into a happier frame of mind. The comfort Yeshua was talking about was the deep comfort of knowing you’re not alone. The tender, nurturing love of God that feels so close during times of grief. And the comfort of feeling the warmth and compassion of other people willing to stand beside you in your sorrow.

When Paul talks about mourning with those who mourn (Romans 12:15), I believe he’s talking about the communal wailing where shame and self-consciousness melt away. Where we sit together and release the cry that we all have trapped inside and let go of the tension, anxiety, grief and horror within.

I am convinced that many of the debilitating symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress could be relieved if we truly allowed ourselves to grieve together in the way that God intended.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. If ever there was a time when we needed beauty for ashes and blessings for mourning, that time is now.