THE GIFT OF TEARS
Great endeavours and hard struggles await those who are converted, but afterwards inexpressible joy. If you want to light a fire, you are troubled at first by smoke, and your eyes water. But in the end you achieve your aim. Now it is written: "Our God is a consuming fire". So we must light the divine fire in us with tears and struggle. - Sayings of the Desert Fathers Amma Syncletica, 2 (SO 1, p. 299)
Spiritual fat is the obtuseness with which evil cloaks the intelligence. - Evagrius of Pontus, Centuries, IV,36 (Frankenberg, 287)
The purpose of ascesis is thus to divest oneself of surplus weight, of spiritual fat. It is to dissolve in the waters of baptism, in the water of tears, all the hardness of the heart, so that it may become an antenna of infinite sensitivity, infinitely vulnerable to the beauty of the world and to the sufferings of human beings, and to God who is Love, who has conquered by the wood of the cross. - Olivier Clement
I fear that the hardening of hearts is the default state of the human condition in our world. Desensitization formed by a constant stream of sanitized death renders our hearts unmoved by tragedy.
Twenty-two thousand people have been killed in Gaza (as of Jan 2nd, 2023). The U.N. has now named it a “graveyard for children,” with 4,104 tiny bodies lying dead. The country has been reduced to rubble. Israel continues to grieve the 1,200 lives lost from the October 7th terrorist attack. This is a mere snapshot of the death and destruction we face in the new year. But do we allow ourselves to grieve it? Do tears purge us of the callousness in our hearts hardened by a commodified new cycle and dry, utilized information? On our devices, we scroll past what should shatter our hearts - satisfied with being intelligently aware but de-humanly detached. Evil’s most significant work is to cloak and guise itself as intelligence. When people argue over which deaths to mourn (Israel / Gaza), this is simply a sign of their denial (grief) and the sustained resonance of evil. It’s a clear indicator of a hardened heart. Until we mourn, we’ve yet to begin our shared healing.
Over the past three years, I have cried more than the prior decades combined. Sometimes, I wonder if people suspect why my tears are so readily available. “Maybe his mental health isn’t doing well?” Ironically, I’ve never taken on more practices of mental well-being than in the past three years: seeing a therapist and a spiritual director, journaling, mindfulness, meditation and prayer. I feel lighter. The world has become more vivid and full. But with that clarity comes an ‘unveiling.’ There is an ineludible honesty and transparency that dissolves denial and emotional untruth. No longer can I read about 4,104 dead children and not weep.
The same is true for joy and gladness. No longer can I be in the presence of sheer and utter gift and not be undone.
More than anything, there are the tears of revelation shed under the gravity of grace. They come in study and in reading. In moments of healing and wonder, there is an overwhelming sense of presence. For me, these tears are inescapable. I’m grateful for it all.
My tears are just the waters of my baptism revisiting me.
By some grace, they are a sharing in Christ’s tears overlooking Jerusalem, a fellowship of his suffering.
Recently, a friend of mine helped me work through this. She spoke of a conversation (a podcast) she had recently listened to that did an incredible re-working of tears: how our imaginations need a new framework for tears. She shared this with me because she is kind and knew that this was something I needed to hear.
We know that tearfulness is frequently associated with depression and anxiety. But it’s so essential to realize that there is another phenomenon available, a healing liberation: tears void of any depressive symptoms and filled with life and humanity. What I am suggesting is that these tears are not a sign of mental illness. In fact, the opposite would be true: if we can sit with both dehumanizing tragedies and divine presence and not be moved, this would actually reflect a deep and problematic disassociation. Here is the hardening of the heart: Pharaoh unmoved by both dehumanization and divine revelation. This is what tears can dissolve if we’re open to grace. Communion is what I’m pointing at. At the Eucharist we who are many become one Body, and in the mystical Presence, His tears become ours. We weep for Lazarus, personal heartache for the longings and losses of those near to us, with whom we share in the breaking of the bread. And, we weep for Jerusalem, entire cities and societies set on destructive paths because they do not know “the things which make for peace [and on which peace depends]!”
The good news is that we may receive the “gift of tears.”
“Pray first of all to receive the gift of tears,” writes Evagrius of Pontus, “in order to soften the hardness of your heart by 'breaking' it.”
“The water of tears is a return to the source, to the water of baptism, and so to the waters of creation that are amenable to the Spirit…So anguish, by becoming prayer, is turned with all its ardour into peace and light.” - Olivier Clement
My prayer for us is that we may receive this gift. And that through our tears, the water of creation may pool together so that the Spirit may hover and brood, forming new possibilities in a world that so desperately needs it.