“That I may be filled with them.
That I may be emptied by them.

That they may teach me
of my sorrow.
That they may lead me
to my strength.”
~Jan L. Richardson

These words are titled “Blessing of the Tears”. I went searching for them this morning. Earlier in the week I mentioned that these days are proving to be very ‘Lentish’. As the days have progressed into this season, this reflective heaviness has continued. So many in the circles I travel are walking in the valley of the shadow of death. In our particular faith community, we have celebrated the lives of so many in memorials or funerals in a very compacted time. Over the years of holding this work I do, this can often happen. Months will go by and there are no deaths and then several will happen within the course of a few days, a few weeks. It can provide a certain context for one’s own life. Ordinary acts become more precious. Friends and loved ones seem more beautiful than ever. Perspective for the things we can believe to be so important, fall away, leaving what it truly vital in a bright light.

Those who know me well know me as a crier. Tears come easily to me and sometimes at what, for others, might seem odd times. Sunrises…..tears. Light falling just so on the trunk of a tree….tears. The way a child has of looking so hopefully at a parent’s face….tears. A prayer spoken in vulnerability….tears. People greeting one another at street corners, in airports, on Sunday morning…tears. Some might see this as weakness and I ask their forgiveness. My own belief is that I simply see the world for what it is…..beautiful….fragile….fleeting….to be held in sacred trust.

Are humans the only ones who cry? I don’t know the answer to that question. I have certainly been in the presence of dogs and cats who seem to be holding sadness or at least sorrow, a sense of loss. In the early mornings of summer, there is a single mourning dove who calls out a haunting cry that I have convinced myself is for its lost partner. Who knows. I just know that the call connects me with the bird’s perceived sorrow and maybe my own.

Tears have welled up in my eyes over injustices I have witnessed. Those same tears have been loosed by an anger that goes bone deep. When words will not come together to scream to the world, tears pour out what is too important not to be spoken in some form. After all, what brings tears into our lives shapes us and challenges us to move toward action, toward reflection and resolution, toward healing and hope.

As one who makes a home in the Christian household, I think of the act of baptism. That time when we place water on a forehead and remind a child, an adult, a parent that from the very beginning, they have been called ‘Beloved’. Our tears….that water that pours forth from within our humble body….blesses us again with water, with naming, with a reminder of who and whose we are.

Today may we each be blessed, not only with tears, but with the strength they eventually bring. A strength that speaks ‘Beloved’. A strength that remind us of the many ways being alive is holding the joy and sorrow of the other. Each and every amazing day.