Finding Ourselves in Story, Finding Our Way Out of Story

Meeting Our Pain Honestly and Skillfully this Tisha b’Av and Beyond

Tisha B’Av is a raw, unvarnished day, on which we don’t pretend that things are okay. Yet, there is an inherent danger, I believe, in how this day has been imagined communally and liturgically. On a day in which we sit on the floor in deep collective and individual mourning, I have experienced a tendency—which I believe is very human—to fill the silences with words. On a day when the study of Torah is prohibited outside of Torah about destruction, one can find any number of talks on said Torah. I think too many of us fear the silence, fear opening that contained grief because we don’t know if we’ll ever find the other side. So we fill our most somber day with words, with doing. Is this taking us out of the day’s intent?

Many of us aren’t prepared, aren’t held in a container that can allow us to actually be with ourselves and the rawness and realness of the horror in our world. Not just past trauma and horror, but ongoing present-day suffering. We are overwhelmed by the enormity of these days, shattered. We wonder if everything we’ve ever believed about ourselves, about our people, about the world, about humanity is facile at best, a lie at worst. And so consumed by the enormity of that pain and those questions, it makes so much sense that we need some vessel to place it in, some wise and skillful vehicle. In 2024, I recorded a talk addressing this directly entitled Finding Ourselves In Story, Finding Our Way Out of Story. Much has changed in the intervening year. Yet, there is also enduring relevance here. May this piece be of benefit, opening some channels of insight and wise discernment this Tisha b’Av and beyond.

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