One of my deepest convictions concerning living a life of faith - which means experiencing my humanity to the fullest degree possible with as much integrity and love as I can muster rather than mere intellectual assent to doctrine - has been shaped by listening to and honoring our tears. Fr. Ed Hays described the prayer of our tears with stunning clarity for me.Our eyes are not only the windows of the soul and organs of enjoyment, they are also instruments of joy and sorrow. While we feel deeply the pain of departure or the intense experience of other emotions, these are not easily shown. Our eyes are sacraments for these beautiful and deeply felt feelings. For even our tears become a way for us to "pray all ways." Tears and laughter are universal languages, for they are understood by people of every nation. Crying is part of our basic birth equipment and so is a gift from God. While its source is divine, crying is usually a source of embarrassment for us. Crying, while embarrassing, is also an honest and incarnational - or bodily - prayer that reaches the ear and heart of God. (Pray All Ways, p. 33)
My earliest encounters with the holy began with tears - and they continue to help me become more real. Clearly my first memory of the sacred was saturated in tears: I was sitting on the sand at age five, awed by the rhythmic power and enormity of the Atlantic Ocean as it pounded the shore. Watching the waves, I went into a trance of sorts, sensing simultaneously both the immeasurable magnitude of God's power as well as God's intimate, loving presence. As a teen about to leave for college that same awareness captured me again while gazing up at the stars. Both times I cried complex tears that were part fear, part assurance, part awe, part insignificance, and part gratitude. Later I learned that Rudolph Otto described this revelation as the core of religious experience in his 1923 masterwork, The Idea of the Holy.
Over the years I have realized that I have consistently been awakened to the holy in my humanity through my tears. At age 7 there was the overwhelming and mysterious waves of grief that washed over me when I learned that my maternal grandfather, Poppa Phil, had died while I slept. Others include: sitting in silent solitude under the Christmas tree after everyone had gone to bed to watch the colored lights twinkle; wiping away tears of joy while watching the Beatles for the first time on Ed Sullivan in February 1964; slouching and sobbing under a hot shower at the news that MLK - and then RFK - had been assassinated; losing the battle to hold back my tears of terror when finally confronting my father's violence with my own act of physical defiance; bursting into tears of vulnerable ecstasy when my virginity came to a close; returning tears of gratitude to God as my daughters were born; screaming through violent fits of alienation and abandonment; and coming to rest in tears of grace when I sensed the living presence of Jesus in Eucharist.
Just a few days ago, while driving to Brooklyn for Louie's birthday party, I found myself weeping yet again when a Bruce Springsteen CD startled me by playing "Living Proof."
This song became my anthem during the final months of my first marriage. It always hits me hard particularly the first verse where the Boss describes feeling God's grace at the birth of his children; and the second where he owns the shame and emptiness he felt during a season of self-destructive exile. I lose it when he sings: "You do some sad things, baby, when its you you're trying to lose; you do some sad and hurtful things: I've seen living proof." That cuts like a knife and brings back my own time of sad and hurtful things. Fr. Hays continues:
Tears are the prayer-beads of all of us, men and women, because they arise from a fullness of heart... all expressions of the heart are good prayer. What happens naturally is usually good and also right. When this experience comes to us, we should not listen to the inner voice that condemns crying or attempts to make us feel shame for our tears. We do not ask to be excused when we laugh, so why should we when we cry? We don't attempt to suppress laughter, why should we attempt to shut off our tears... Perhaps (the time as come) to explore more ways to laugh and cry as we worship God... making room for these expressions when they arise naturally.
Knowing that my tears have been a trustworthy spiritual director, however, does not mean I have always been at peace with their wisdom. For decades I fought to keep them under control. Sometimes, with my children - or during a profoundly emotional funeral homily - I found myself overpowered by tears. It was agonizing for me and quite likely unsettling for those who had to endure these feeble attempts at squelching my deep emotions. Like many men of my generation, I had been raised to believe that grown men did not cry. That tears are a sign of weakness. But Fr. Hays insists that while "tears are an expression of a lack of control... they are also prayer because prayer is communion with that which is beyond our control: God." They are also sacraments of humility - and paradox - that help us practice trusting the One who is beyond our ability to comprehend. "Praying our tears" helps us "resist the temptation to be tough or rigid and instead be relaxed and fully human." (Hays. p. 37)
I think I was 45 before I digested and owned the insights of Ed Hays. His words about Jesus weeping helped me open my own heart and honor the prayer of my tears. Ten years later, Frederick Buechner added another layer of insight to my experience when he wrote:
You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.
What has been revealed to me in these tears is my stop-and-go quest to live into tenderness. Not power. Not prestige. And not really understanding. Rather, I have been trying to follow the path of tenderness. Compassion. What the Prayer of St. Francis calls becoming "an instrument of God's peace." And here is how I regain focus: whenever I find myself getting too far off track - and full of myself - a song springs up from out of nowhere to knock me on my butt and open up my tear ducts. Judy Collins' version of Leonard Cohen's "Joan of Arc" renders me a virtual Niagara Falls. Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen's version of Dave Mason's "Feelin' Alright" does the same thing only with joy rather than grief. Springsteen's "Born in the USA" grounds me in tears of humility. And Carrie Newcomer's "I Believe" evokes tears born of the sacramental reality of everyday life. Over and over I find myself returning to these closing words from Hays:
Lord, Beloved God,
since all communion with You is prayer,
may even my tears be psalms of petition
and canticles of praise to You...
All truly great prayer
rises from deep inside
and springs spontaneously to the surface.
It would then seem
that from among the many beautiful prayers,
the sacred songs and canticles of praise,
my tears may be the best worship of all.
Help me not to be ashamed of them;
show me how I can let go of control
and let this prayer of my heart, my tears,
flow naturally and freely to You,
my Blessed Lord and Divine Lover.
In times of joy or sorrow,
blessed be my tears,
the holy prayers of my heart.
Amen.
credits:
+ God's Tears @ https://www.prettyneatcreative.com/products/gods-tears-square-diamond-painting
+ Icon - James Lumsden
+ Corn field - Dianne De Moot
This song became my anthem during the final months of my first marriage. It always hits me hard particularly the first verse where the Boss describes feeling God's grace at the birth of his children; and the second where he owns the shame and emptiness he felt during a season of self-destructive exile. I lose it when he sings: "You do some sad things, baby, when its you you're trying to lose; you do some sad and hurtful things: I've seen living proof." That cuts like a knife and brings back my own time of sad and hurtful things. Fr. Hays continues:
Tears are the prayer-beads of all of us, men and women, because they arise from a fullness of heart... all expressions of the heart are good prayer. What happens naturally is usually good and also right. When this experience comes to us, we should not listen to the inner voice that condemns crying or attempts to make us feel shame for our tears. We do not ask to be excused when we laugh, so why should we when we cry? We don't attempt to suppress laughter, why should we attempt to shut off our tears... Perhaps (the time as come) to explore more ways to laugh and cry as we worship God... making room for these expressions when they arise naturally.
Knowing that my tears have been a trustworthy spiritual director, however, does not mean I have always been at peace with their wisdom. For decades I fought to keep them under control. Sometimes, with my children - or during a profoundly emotional funeral homily - I found myself overpowered by tears. It was agonizing for me and quite likely unsettling for those who had to endure these feeble attempts at squelching my deep emotions. Like many men of my generation, I had been raised to believe that grown men did not cry. That tears are a sign of weakness. But Fr. Hays insists that while "tears are an expression of a lack of control... they are also prayer because prayer is communion with that which is beyond our control: God." They are also sacraments of humility - and paradox - that help us practice trusting the One who is beyond our ability to comprehend. "Praying our tears" helps us "resist the temptation to be tough or rigid and instead be relaxed and fully human." (Hays. p. 37)
I think I was 45 before I digested and owned the insights of Ed Hays. His words about Jesus weeping helped me open my own heart and honor the prayer of my tears. Ten years later, Frederick Buechner added another layer of insight to my experience when he wrote:
You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.
What has been revealed to me in these tears is my stop-and-go quest to live into tenderness. Not power. Not prestige. And not really understanding. Rather, I have been trying to follow the path of tenderness. Compassion. What the Prayer of St. Francis calls becoming "an instrument of God's peace." And here is how I regain focus: whenever I find myself getting too far off track - and full of myself - a song springs up from out of nowhere to knock me on my butt and open up my tear ducts. Judy Collins' version of Leonard Cohen's "Joan of Arc" renders me a virtual Niagara Falls. Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen's version of Dave Mason's "Feelin' Alright" does the same thing only with joy rather than grief. Springsteen's "Born in the USA" grounds me in tears of humility. And Carrie Newcomer's "I Believe" evokes tears born of the sacramental reality of everyday life. Over and over I find myself returning to these closing words from Hays:
Lord, Beloved God,
since all communion with You is prayer,
may even my tears be psalms of petition
and canticles of praise to You...
All truly great prayer
rises from deep inside
and springs spontaneously to the surface.
It would then seem
that from among the many beautiful prayers,
the sacred songs and canticles of praise,
my tears may be the best worship of all.
Help me not to be ashamed of them;
show me how I can let go of control
and let this prayer of my heart, my tears,
flow naturally and freely to You,
my Blessed Lord and Divine Lover.
In times of joy or sorrow,
blessed be my tears,
the holy prayers of my heart.
Amen.
credits:
+ God's Tears @ https://www.prettyneatcreative.com/products/gods-tears-square-diamond-painting
+ Icon - James Lumsden
+ Corn field - Dianne De Moot
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