This “way of tears,” and the deep vulnerability that it expresses, is opposed to our normal ways of seeking control through willpower, commandment, force, retribution, and violence. Instead, we begin in a state of empathy with and for things and people and events, which just might be the opposite of judgmentalism. It’s hard to be on the attack when you are weeping. Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things. [https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/FMfcgzQZTVqLvmFmqMWXXGJnlRTsrSGf]
I look forward to reading Richard Rohr’s new book Ther Tears of Things, because I frequently don’t understand why I am crying. It is sometimes sadness, sometimes grief, sometimes joy, often unidentifiable. I do understand that tears bring relief and should not be dreaded.
Tears are sometimes a release from anger. I cannot stop being angry about the chaos, the ruthlessness and the loss of people’s jobs since the last election. It is anger about what I cannot control. Then suddenly I wept one day, and the tears felt cleansing. The next day I was angry again. Finally I had insulate myself from the news, except for one hour per day. I recommend PBS for this purpose, because they dive into the “why” of the news, and it almost makes sense.
I found two birthday cards a week ago on “Blue Mountain” (https://www.bluemountain.com/). I was helping Victoria select one for a family birthday. As I was previewing the first one, I began to weep, as if it had some significance for me, but it was a cheerful, even humorous, card. When I showed her the second card, I felt nothing. When Victoria selected the first card, I said, “This one is making me cry,” but I could not say why. It did not make me feel sad or happy, but I was moved just the same. I sometimes have these moments, when I cry for no apparent reason.
They say old men are more prone to tears, because their inner resistance has weakened, but maybe we just have more memories to elicit tears. Singing in church, I am sometimes moved to tears, but cannot tell why. When I sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” I most always remember that it was my mother’s favorite hymn. She has been gone twelve years now. Am I still mourning or does her memory give me joy? We also sang it at my wedding to Kathy in 1974. That was fifty years ago. Am I singing the joy of that day or her death in 2016? Tears are complex as we age.
Just about every movie about teaching makes me cry; I am a career teacher. To Sir, With Love (1967) was one of the reasons I went into teaching, because the teacher was a savior figure who struggled with kids from London’s lower classes. In the end they loved him and composed a song that sang his praises. That worn-out classroom plot gets me every time. I can’t say I ever redeemed a hopeless class in my twenty years of high school teaching. Still I cry for Mr. Holland’s Opus (1989), Lean on Me (1989), Dead Poet’s Society (1989), Dangerous Minds (1995), and Freedom Writers (2007), all telling the same teacher-as- savior plot that has begun to lose its credibility[ https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/info-2021/inspirational-films-teachers.html].
When I began to teach teachers I warned my novice teachers that they should aspire to lead (education = “lead out”), rather than make friends, as the movies may portray teaching. Students are not inherently bad, but if they can undermine classroom stability, they will. You can make friends after you lead. With all my worldly knowledge of the classroom, if you roll out a movie of a teacher winning his classroom against all odds, I will cry like a baby. Later I will tell you that the movie makers know nothing about real teaching.
After I first met my present wife I was weeping all the time. I wrote poetry and had long phone calls. I hate phone conversation. Somedays I would be crying before breakfast.
Previously I had a successful marriage with my late wife of 42 years, but I was overwhelmed at this second chance at marriage. Perhaps I had never expected this opportunity, yet I already knew the perils of married life. I had lived the discord as well as the dream. I knew about how parents interfere. I had lived through illnesses and drag-down fights. I was not an infatuated teenager. I knew it was from joy, but did I imagine marriage would be bliss the second time around? Apparently. Still weeping at 70.
I no longer dread tears in myself or in others. I have never seen a person who was harmed by tears. Tears may express fears and loss, they may come inappropriately, they may cause others distress, but they are usually good therapy, good transitions or helpful discoveries. You can learn from tears, but don’t always expect a lesson. They have a life of their own, and they don’t want to explain themselves. They are what they are, despite what your psycho-therapist says.
I cry, therefore I am.
We landed on the shores of Lighthouse Cove, Jupiter FL on Tuesday evening and began a week on the east coast of Florida at a “Unique and Charming–Waterfront Studio Cottage”seen at right. Tight, but comfortable quarters with a Murphy bed* and a bathroom as tight as the head on a one-cabin cruiser.
As with any cruise, the food was excellent, the service exemplary, the recreation satisfying. Probably overstepped my generational limits by taking the waterslide from the top. Ten seconds of gentle sliding bookending ten seconds of dark, terrifying spinning. Recovered the next day in the hot tub, with an hour of moderate boiling. Cannot over-emphasize the therapeutic effects of hot tubbing.
in Preservation Hall, a 63-year-old venue that looks like somebody’s basement, but rings with local bands playing for jazz innocents and sophisticates alike. Their final number was a jazz Jingle Bells, which I recorded, but could not upload to this fussy website.
