Last night I watched the widely-broadcast memorial service for the students, teachers and principal, and mother who lost their lives in Newtown Connecticut on Friday December 14th. It was an interfaith, ecumenical, political, media event that took place in what appeared to be a school auditorium.There were all kinds of traditional religious offerings: opening words, comforting prayers, scriptures, homilies, benediction, etc. The Quran was quoted right along side The Book of Romans. Women clergy officiated right next to Catholic priests. It was diverse. The best of each tradition got poured out of each representative leader. It’s not often that such displays of cooperation and pluralism shine from American religion. Perhaps it takes such a devastating tragedy for us to get over our petty squabbling. Who knows? What I do know is that given my values, my deep and abiding commitment to interfaith and ecumenical solidarity, I should have been proud of what was happening. But I wasn’t.

And it wasn’t an all together unfamiliar feeling. It’s something I feel almost every time I officiate a funeral. It’s a recognition of the unsolvability, the sheer un-utterablility of loss. Is there anything that can be said, about God, about heaven, about this life of sheer precarity, from scripture, from tradition, from even the most devout clergy person--that helps us make sense of the murder of children?

No there is not. And that's why even the most well-orchestrated interfaith, ecumenical display of solidarity fell short. How dare we even speak? Words become filler. It's rather pathetic. And yet, where are the spaces for genuine morning if we don't create them?

There was only one moment during that entire CNN-televised service when I felt connected to what’s sacred: it was the moment President Obama (not a person of the cloth) began reading the names of those who were lost. As he was saying their names, one by one, slowly, tears began to fall. Soon the weeping that’s necessary in order for us to remain human in the face of such inexplicable loss could be heard from those in the auditorium. Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison. Say them out loud and see if it doesn’t shift the energy in your spirit.

I often notice that when families have lots of unresolved issues, funerals become battlegrounds. The details of the service become a point of tension, of unworked rage finding its way to the surface. Or worse, family members, clergy people, or old associates use the ceremony for their own ends: to make lofty speeches, to get in their last digs, to host an altar call. These misuses of sacred space, space designated for the holy work of grieving, are beyond disturbing not only because the healing work of the heart’s repair cannot begin, but because the dead are not mourned on such occasions. Someone famous once said you could measure the character of a culture based on how they treat their children and how they mourn the dead. America, how do we measure?

The discourse in our nation since the elementary school tragedy reminds me of a family with way too many unresolved issues. We’ve been attacking each other about guns and mental illness. We’ve been hoping people with power--religious and cultural and political--will say something or do something to ease the pain. But they can’t. What’s done is done and more horrifyingly, what’s gone is gone. Kids. Educators. Lives. Gone. And fighting each other isn’t going to solve anything. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s time to reconsider our gun laws and I believe mental health care is essential for a thriving society. But now, now is the time for saying the names. Now is the time for silence and weeping, together. Because if we don’t grieve, and I mean truly grieve, each and every one of us, anything we say or do to ease the pain will be short-lived and insufficient. It is only the wrecked heart, the heart that has nothing left to lose, that can be transformed in the ways we need to be transformed.