The Gift of Tears



I do not cry often. I want to cry often, but I struggle with the actual making of tears. It sucks. Curses to the lies of machoism and stoicism.



I have, by God's grace, cried twice this month. The last time that I cried prior to this month was June of 2001 when I had to inform my life mentor, Kevin Odor, that I was being called away from Canyon Ridge Christian Church. This is the fist time that i have cried twice in the same month since I was 13 years old. I am so grateful for these tears.



I came accross a passage from the Philokalia while reading today. I would like to submit it to you, dear reader. May He give you the gift of tears...



"The fruits of the inner man begin only with the shedding of tears. When you reach the place of tears, then know that your spirit has come out from the prison of this world and has set its foot upon the path that leads towards the new age. Your spirit begins at this moment to breathe the wonderful air which is there, and it starts to shed tears. The moment for the birth of the spiritual child is now at hand, and the travail of childbirth becomes intense. Grace, the common mother of us all, makes haste to give birth mystically to the soul, God' s image, bringing it forth into the light of the age to come. And when the time for birth has arrived, the intellect begins to sense something of the things of that other world-as a faint perfume, or as the breath of life which a newborn child receives into its bodily frame. But we are not accustomed to such an experience, and, finding it hard to endure, our body is suddenly overcome by a weeping mingled with joy." --Isaac of Nineveh's Mystic Treatises