Thriving Spirit

 The Sackcloth Project

There are a number of references to wearing sackcloth in the Jewish Bible. Wearing sackcloth is part of a ritual for responding to times of impending doom. In chapter 4 of the Book of Esther, when Mordechai learns of Haman’s decree to destroy the Jewish people on a specified future date, he tears his clothes, garbs himself in sackcloth and ashes, and wails dramatically. The Jewish people throughout the lands affected by the decree respond with fasting and weeping and lamenting and also wearing sackcloth and ashes. In chapter 3 of the Book of Jonah, when the people of Nineveh hear that their city will be destroyed in forty days, they proclaim a fast and put on sackcloth. In this extraordinary story, when news reaches the king of Nineveh, even the king steps down from his throne, takes off his robe, puts on sackcloth, and sits in ashes, and calls upon the people to cry out to God and to turn away from their injustice and violence.

In recent years, as I have prayed about how to respond to these dark times of fires and floods, warming of the ocean, war, pandemic, mass shootings, mass incarceration, hunger, homelessness, criminalization of reproductive health care for women, and so much more devastation, I have begun experimenting with bringing back the practice of wearing sackcloth. I have invited my students and colleagues and community into this exploration.

One way to begin with wearing sackcloth is to cut out a small square of sackcloth and attach it to your clothing with a safety pin, much in the way that small ribbons have been worn at different times to raise awareness and build community around a particular issue. Wearing the sackcloth is a tangible acknowledgment of grief and fear, as well as our personal responsibility in transforming injustice and violence and dismantling systems of oppression. Another possibility for wearing sackcloth is to cut a strip to wear around the neck, like a scarf. I invite your creativity! During a ritual I created last year on the Jewish fast day of the 17th of Tammuz (observed on Sunday, July 17, in 2022), a day that commemorates the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem prior to the destruction of the Temple, I wore a sackcloth dress (I transformed a sackcloth that was courtesy of our local cafe by cutting out a hole for my head and holes for my arms). On July 4, 2022, I spoke at an abortion rights rally by City Hall in Philadelphia, wearing a piece of sackcloth (pictured above).

Join me in this exploration of wearing sackcloth. You can ask a local cafe for some sackcloths (my local cafe was happy to give me some sackcloths) or purchase burlap.

Please send me your reflections and photos as we support one another in openly honoring our grief and our fear, in humbling ourselves and examining our ways, and in transforming injustice and violence. May our cries for Mother Earth and for mothers, for young and for old and for everybody in between, for life and thriving and loving and kindness and truth and justice be heard and heeded!