Tending the Wounds: The Power of Lament in Fragmented Times

with Rachael Clinton Chen

Groaning Together: The Power of Lament in Fragmented Times

Trauma practitioner and pastor Rachel Clinton Chen makes a tender, theologically rich case for lament as a leadership practice. Drawing from Scripture (Psalms, Lamentations, the prophets; Romans 8’s “groaning”), the Black and Indigenous church, and trauma-informed care, she reframes lament as prayerful protest that tells the truth, honors suffering, and invites repair. Far from despair, lament is addressed to God; it dignifies both the harm endured and the complicity we must name.

Rachel names why many churches lost this language, how polarization and propaganda dysregulate our bodies, and why communal lament may slow us down and even feel messier, precisely because it is the path toward comfort, courage, and repair.

You’ll learn:

• What lament is (and isn’t): not faithlessness or despair, but prayerful protest to God that holds grief, anger, and hope together.
• A biblical and historic toolkit: Psalms/Lamentations, the prophets, Jeremiah’s “wailing women,” and the witness of the Black church and liberation traditions.
• A trauma-aware lens: how polarization activates fight–flight–freeze, fragments bodies and communities, and why embodied practices (art, song, silence, movement) help us come back online.
• The “equalizer” of lament: naming both sin/complicity and the pain of the oppressed (e.g., Han) so communities can repent, be comforted, and move toward repair.
• Practical on-ramps: start with your own safe spaces (therapy, peer care), then pilot small liturgical moments, Scripture readings of lament, or grief stations; expecting slow, real change.
• Guardrails for care: create safer rooms (including affinity spaces when needed), resource outside help, and remember Romans 8 as an anchor: nothing separates us from the love of God.