Tisha B’Av is one of the most powerful days on the Jewish calendar for me. I think it is very spiritually and emotionally healthy to set aside a day where there is an obligation to be sad and confront grief and brokenness: one’s own, the Jewish people’s, the entire world’s. And I hasten to add that there are also days where one is commanded to be joyful! The welcoming of one’s whole emotional life into one’s spiritual life is necessary and the Jewish tradition does it well.
Certainly, the Christian liturgical calendar also offers opportunities to engage with different emotions. However, growing up in non-liturgical traditions, I only discovered that as a teenager. During the Pentecostal/charismatic portion of my childhood, my father was quite taken with the prosperity gospel teaching which prohibited acknowledging ill health or poverty or other problems – if one had enough faith, one could be healed/wealthy/etc. One had to pretend that everything was wonderful and ignore problems or one was showing a lack of faith. It was abusive.
I am grateful for this day when we can be sad and angry and mourn – because it is only when we welcome our sadness, our anger, our grief, and our other unpleasant emotions that we can begin to rebuild and come out of these narrow places to redemption.
May you have a meaningful Tisha B’Av.
