Being Educated and Practicing Communal Lament for Co-Creating a Tradition of Memory, Resistance, and Care in Liturgy: Reconsidering the Narrative of Suffering in the Time of Violence against Women

Abstract

The Bible tells keeners to teach lament to a faith community and to the daughters of the community when evil and injustice are rampant. This intriguing demand draws the attention of the faith community to how lament works and how it can become a community practice to deal with suffering. This study specifically challenges the adequacy of the liturgy and the response of the faith community to violence against women. Reading Jeremiah 9 and Judges 11 from a lament perspective cultivates one’s ability to imagine the experiences of others and to share in their sufferings. This study reconstructs the language of faith as lament, participates in the suffering of women exposed to violence, and includes the lament tradition and women’s voices in the liturgical tradition. By retrieving and teaching traditions that are responsive to suffering, the faith community can contribute to the building of co-creation by continually remembering, resisting, and caring for suffering, both now and in generations to come. Becoming educated in lament is not about subverting established traditions, but about co-constructing traditions by including excluded voices, rediscovering the richness of voices, incorporating powerful modifications, and bringing new perspectives to the surface.