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“Sometimes we have to allow grief to have its way with us for a while. We need to get lost in the landscape of grief. It is a wild and rugged wilderness terrain to be sure, but it is here that we meet our truest selves. And we are met by God. The wilderness makes no space for pretense or facade. The language of platitudes and trite niceties are of no use to us in the wilderness. In the wilderness, we speak what is primitive and primary. We say what is true. We say what is hard and heartbreaking. We wail.”
― A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing
― A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing
“The death wail is unsophisticated. It is not curated. It cares not what others think of it, and it has no desire for an interpreter. It is a language meant not for communication but rather for expelling the darkness. When it breaks free, one loses all sense of propriety and performance. The wailer slips into a world of inconsequence, succumbing to the sorrow and finally expressing with unbridled veracity what is true and real about all that is being experienced: I am destroyed.”
― A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing
― A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing
“Our inclination to explain away suffering is an indication of how reticent we are to simply lament as a society, to admit our weakness. When our understandings of cause and effect, control, and reciprocity are all disrupted, it's humbling. Bewilderment is an experience we aren't accustomed to in our culture. But this humiliation and bewilderment are at the heart of the death wail. They are the ingredients of grief. Death is humiliating. It's mortifying. It's incomprehensible. So many of the psalms of lament begin with the question, 'Why?' And there isn't always an answer.”
― A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing
― A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing
Brooke’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Brooke’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,841 books
|
154 friends
2,117 books
|
59 friends
531 books
|
21 friends
129 books
|
11 friends
236 books
|
12 friends
563 books
|
106 friends
1 book
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84 friends
3 books
|
50 friends
More friends…
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