The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

by Francis Weller

The third function of ritual is that it invites the denied and forgotten aspects of psyche to show up, those abandoned parts of who we are.

Psychologist Robert Moore writes, “Deep structural change requires a reliable psychosocial framing, the facilitation of a holding environment that can help individuals and groups tolerate the terrors of change, with its attendant painful truths and emotions.”55

In ritual space, something inside of us shimmers, quickens, and aligns itself with a larger, more vital element.

We become vivid in ritual space, exposed and transparent. This is exactly what we need and what we fear.

Ritual is able to hold the long-discarded shards of our stories and make them whole again. It has the strength and elasticity to contain what we cannot hold on our own, what we cannot face in solitude.

For example, we don’t normally all weep together, but somehow, when we step across the threshold into a grief ritual, it feels right. We enter a borderland state between our individual lives and the unseen world of spirit. This is the terrain of radical change.

Ritual provides the elements necessary to help transform whatever it is we are carrying in our psyches. It may be fear, grief, rage, or shame. It may be that as a community, we have been shattered by the loss of one or more of our youth through murder, suicide, or war.

Ritual provides something else that we deeply need: a level of witnessing that truly enables us to be seen.

sustained attention; it deepens the connection between all present.

There is a fierce grace that comes with this type of transparency, as it removes all strategies of concealment and falseness and exposes the raw and naked pieces of our soul to the community.

I never would have thought that raw, searing grief and sorrow could bring out the most tender, generous, compassionate, and loving sides of total strangers. It was exquisite. I will carry this with me for the rest of my life. I saw in the darkest corners of our pain and grief, something very beautiful. Suffering compels us to reach. When you find a channel for your rage and deepest suffering, and there’s another hand there reaching back, what lies in the wake of it all, is finally—blessed peace. Calm. Nothing has changed about your loss . . . it’s still there. But your relationship with it has been greatly altered. You have been heard and held tenderly. You have been drained. And then you can open yourself up again. You can start to rebuild in that annihilated place.

While most of us have a difficult time touching our sorrow, some of us feel that we may have gotten lost in it; we feel that grief has taken up permanent residence in our hearts and souls. We are trapped, unable to break free from the emotions that swirl around our sorrow. Grief becomes an identity, a way of locating ourselves in the world. It can become a place of hiding.