THE SACRAMENT OF TEARS

Saturday, November 01, 2008

(I did not write the following words. I selected them from Ken Gire’s excellent book, Windows of the Soul. They are his words, not mine, but I so strongly identify with them—they could be mine.)

Perhaps there are no greater windows of the soul than our tears.

Tears…came September 12, 1986, at 4:36 in the morning when the phone rang in the dark and I heard the words, “Dad died.”

Judy Garland singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz, and her repeating “There’s no place like home” at the end. One or the other usually brings tears. Sometimes both.

“The Bible was written in tears,” said A.W. Tozer, “and to tears it yields its best treasures.”

My eyes moisten sometimes when I wake up before Judy does, and I see her lying there, and I realize what a joy she is to me, what wonderful memories we have shared, the laughter, the love. And lying there, watching her, I realize that someday I will wake up and she will not be on the other side of my bed, or that she will wake up and I will not be on the other side of hers. And the thought of that is too sad and too lonely to bear without the company of tears.

The closest communion with God comes, I believe, through the sacrament of tears. Just as grapes are crushed to make wine and grain to make bread, so the elements of this sacrament come from the crushing expiences of life.