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I lived in a rural village in Malawi, East Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 90s. There, I experienced the power of communal lament. When someone died, the women in the community would start to wail. They would bawl for hours. Neighboring villagers could hear the grief-stricken sound from far away and join the mourning.

I came to realize there was great wisdom in this. Taking on an outward, physical manifestation of grief helped people move through it. It cued emotional release. It was cathartic.

On the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus shut down, a group of 20 people gathered for a drum circle outside our church’s narthex. Our leader encouraged us to put our emotions onto the surface of the drum and invited us to speak names and losses into the space between beats. Somewhere along the line, I realized I was being gathered in by God.

As I learned in rural Malawi, something important happens when we gather to grieve. I knew that we had released something important. Jesus gathered us together, and our sorrow would not remain forever. There was lament. There was catharsis. And then, there was peace.

This message is excerpted from “Lamenting together” by Sarah S. Scherschligt in the April 2021 Café online magazine. Today is Holy Saturday. Today we commemorate Benedict the African, confessor, 1589.