All Suffering is Sacred. How do you engage with the process of suffering, trauma, and despair in a healthy way? I spoke with Dr. Kathleen O’Connor, Professor of Old Testament, Emerita, at Columbia Theological Seminary and explored with her how people in the Bible respond to disaster and suffering and engage in the necessary work of processing and recovering from personal crisis or collective catastrophe via the process of lament.

Dr O’Connor has written a number of books: Jeremiah: Pain and Promise (Fortress, 2011), using a lens drawing from trauma and disaster studies. Another of her books, Lamentations and the Tears of the World (Orbis Press, 2002), received first prize in scripture from the Catholic Press Association, 2003. More recently, she completed a two volume commentary on the Book of Genesis (Smith & Helwys, 2016, 2018), using insights from trauma and disaster studies. A former president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, she has also served on Council of the Society of Biblical Literature. In 2015, Columbia Theological Seminary inaugurated the Kathleen O’Connor Lectures in her honor.