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By Esther McIlveen
"For frequent tears have run the colours of my life."
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets From the Portuguese
 TEARS, for many people, are both an enigma and a personal embarrassment. When they come, people say, I lost it, I got emotional, I fell apart. I choked up.
This is true for Karen, who wrote in a letter: "I don't share myself, for tears are so close to the surface."
When our daughter was quite young, certain classical pieces of music moved her to tears. June, a well-spoken English lady confessed, "Whenever I read the scriptures, I weep copiously. This keeps me from reading in public."
An Anglican minister found that tears accompanied his preaching, and didn't know how to explain the phenomenon.
People weep for many reasons. One reason to become more familiar with tears is that our ability not to be upset by them will benefit ourselves and others. Another reason to be informed about the nature of tears is that we will be a able to discern why they are happening in order to profit from them.
Anyone who is involved in the renewing work of the Holy Spirit can't avoid the place of tears. Tears are found in the writings of Julian, Augustine and St.Francis. Catherine Hueck Doherty in hr book, Poustinia, says that when the Holy Spirit opens to you the panorama of the world and its pain, it will be tears that will be given. In the Orthodox Way, Fr. Kallistos Ware writes:
"When it is genuinely spiritual, 'speaking in tongues' seems to represent an act of 'letting go' - the crucial moment in the breaking down of our self-trust, and its willingness to allow God to act within us. In the Orthodox tradition this act of 'letting go' more often takes the form of the gift of tears."
Fr. Maloney S.J. in Inward Stillness, records the teaching that this term is used because the waters of baptism only dealt with past sin, while the waters of our tears often relate to God's washing away of our present sin.
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At a Creative Writing Workshop I gave on tears at a CFO camp, I discovered people who had the gift of tears. They realized the gift was not associated with human passions, but with the experience with God. We looked in the Scriptures at the different personalities who had wept for different reasons.
Scripture says Jesus, "in the days of his flesh, offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears," and it says they brought a response: "he was heard for his godly fear."
Jeremiah, called the weeping prophet, wept for his nation: "O that my head were tears and my eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people."
He went on to instruct those who had been deported from their own land to "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."
Paul, in his letter to the Corinthian church, wrote, "Out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, I write to let you know the abundant love that I have for you."
In exhorting the church in Philippi to follow his example and to imitate him, Paul says, "For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ."
Diane M. Komp, in her book, Anatomy of a Lie, says But the most important day for us can be the day that we reclaim our cancelled tears.
The next time you hear phrases such as "It's not very professional," "Big boys don't cry" or "Keep a stiff upper lip," remember that tears are a unique gift for both men and women to help the healing process.
In the film Dead Man Walking, Sister Prejean helps Patrick Sonnier, a convicted killer who is sentenced to die by lethal injection, out of denial -- by getting him to face the wrongs of his actions.
Then she sings to prepare him for death:
"Blessed are you poor, for the Kingdom shall be yours,
Blest are you that weep and mourn, for one day
you shall Taught.
Be not afraid, I go before you always, come follow Me and I will give you rest.
July 12/2007
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