I’ve been thinking a lot lately  about what it means to be an ally for people and communities who have experienced trauma. I think about it in my own relationships, knowing people who are wrestling with their own loss, hurt, and despair. I think about it in relation to my Mercy Church community, with friends who live on the streets and struggle with addiction and mental illness, many of them survivors of childhood trauma themselves. And in recent weeks I’ve been thinking about it in terms of my Black friends and neighbors, many of whom have been raising their voices in the streets demanding change from the immediate traumas of police brutality and the generational traumas of enslavement, segregation, and white supremacy.

But what does it mean to be an ally for those living with trauma?

The Would-Be Ally in the Book of Lamentations

One place I have found inspiration is in the biblical book of Lamentations. Set in the shadows of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 bce, Lamentations represents the reflections of a community traumatized by famine, war, and ultimately the destruction of the city.

Lamentations presents the perspectives of five speakers, most of whom describe themselves as survivors of the traumatic attack on Jerusalem. But there is one speaker, known as the Funeral Singer, who doesn’t describe himself as a survivor. Instead, he seems to be an outsider observer whose job it is to sing a funeral song about the devastation of the city. He comes from the outside to describe someone else’s pain. He’s not a survivor but an ally. Or—at least he could be an ally. But he has a few things to learn first.

Not surprisingly, when the Funeral Singer first encounters devastated city of Jerusalem, he describes it in the easy categories he has at hand. Drawing on the Reward/Punishment Theology of Deuteronomy, he blames the city for its own destruction. “Jerusalem has sinned greatly,” he says, “therefore she has become a joke” (1:8). He describe her in exposing, shameful terms: “Those who honored her now detest her, for they’ve seen her naked….Her uncleanness shows on her clothing; she didn’t consider what would happen to her” (1:8-9). The Funeral Singer thinks he has all the answers, and he is eager to share them. He comes in talking, and he talks for 11 verses straight.

Transformative Listening

But then a remarkable thing happens. The city begins to speak back to him! Personified as the female Daughter Zion, Jerusalem interrupts the Funeral Singer to describe her pain and humiliation in her own words. “From above [God] sent fire into my bones; he trampled them,” she says. “He spread a net for my feet; he forced me backward. He left me devastated, constantly sick” (1:13). After describing her suffering in searing detail, she then laments her loss. “Because of all these things I’m crying. My eyes, my own eyes pour water because a comforter who might encourage me is nowhere near. My children are destroyed because the enemy was so strong” (1:15-16).

After listening to Daughter Zion, the Funeral Singer begins to speak again. But now his attitude has changed completely. He is hardly recognizable as the same person. Having had his comfortable distance shattered by her truth-telling, he beings to cry on her behalf. “My eyes are worn out from weeping; my stomach is churning. My insides are poured on the ground because the daughter of my people is shattered” (2:11). She has moved him. He has listened to her voice and allowed himself to feel her pain. And now he is changed. He has even begun to identify with her as “my people” instead of “those people”. He has become invested.

Now at a loss for easy explanations, the Funeral Singer speaks the only words he knows to say. “How can I comfort you, young woman Daughter Zion? Your hurt is as vast as the sea. Who can heal you?” (2:13). He realizes he has no comfort to offer. No simple theologies, no explanations, no slogans or pat answers can heal her woundedness. It is as vast as the sea. More than one can comprehend.

Witness, Encouragement, and Silence

And there, perhaps, is the moment where healing can begin. When the passive observer listens to the stories of the wounded, and feels the pain of the traumatized, and submits to the overwhelming realization that the hurt is too much to bear. The Funeral Singer has seen her. He has listened to her. He has identified with her. He has wept with her. He has acknowledged that her story is true and that he has been a fool for thinking he had understood.

But what the Funeral Singer does next seems most important to me. He doesn’t try to quiet her or get her to be more polite. He doesn’t silence her with promises of incremental change. Instead, he calls on her to shout even louder. “Get up and cry out at nighttime, at the start of the night shift; pour out your heart before my Lord like water! Lift your hands up to him for the life of your children—the ones who are fainting from hunger on every street corner” (2:18-19). He emboldens her voice to cry out for justice in the streets.

And then the Funeral Singer is silent.

A Place to Start

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Funeral Singer and what it would look like to be that kind of ally in these times. To be present with people who are suffering. To listen to their voices, to hear their stories, and to allow myself to be moved by their pain. To acknowledge that I have no answers, but that I recognize the overwhelming depth of the pain, as vast and uncontained as the sea. And then to encourage their voices in the public sphere as they cry out for justice for their children. Not silencing the protest or coopting the protest but simply encouraging the speaking of truth in the street.

I’m not sure what we are called to in these days. But that at least that seems like a place to start.

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