The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World

by Sharon Brous

It is then, when the mourners turn from the graveside, that they must imagine returning home and navigating life without their loved ones. (I remember after one funeral, when a bereaved woman collapsed to the ground beside her husband’s burial site. “It’s so cold out here! I can’t just leave him in this field!”) But the community, predicting this agonizing sense of displacement, forms two parallel lines, facing one another, a path leading away from the burial site. The mourners process between the two lines, while each member of the community, one by one, whispers words of comfort. Some share the traditional formula of consolation: May the Holy One comfort you, along with all the brokenhearted among our people and all people. Those two lines of family, friends, and community, we learn, are like support railings that will catch us when we fear we might fall off the edge of the world. Amen, the community says. We’ve got you.