The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are… Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. ~Frederick Buechner in “Wishful Thinking and later” in Beyond Words
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. -2 Cor 4:8-9, 16-18
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage …that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky from The Brothers Karamazov
Twenty-five years ago, a day started with bright sun above and ended in tears and bloodshed below.
This is a day for recollection; we live out a remembrance of the torrential red that flowed that day;
A quarter century later, our streets both near and far-away still course with the blood of innocents, so what have we learned from all this?
That terrible day’s edges were so sharp we all bled; still bearing the scars, we need comforting.
So do not be afraid: you are not alone.
We breathe and weep and love as we remember that day, emerging inevitably transformed.
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Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.
The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said,“Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.
Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well,because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. John 12: 1-11
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say ‘good-good-good-good-good!’ like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit. I am a man of losses, regrets, and griefs. I am an old man full of love. I am a man of faith. But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. Even a man of faith knows that … we’ve all got to go through enough to kill us. ~Wendell Berry from Jayber Crow
She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Mark 14:8
Last week, it became apparent one warm late summer evening that in the thick bushes lining the front of our farmhouse under our windows, some animal had died.
The stink wafted on the breeze into our bedrooms through our summer-open windows.
The outdoor farm cats and our dog were accounted for, so it must have been a dead squirrel, a raccoon or even a (actually dead) possum, all occasional nighttime visitors to our cat food dish on the nearby front porch.
Trying to find the offending carcass would involve cutting through dense foliage that had been growing over two decades – not an easy task to undertake. So we closed the windows and hoped the smell would dissipate quickly.
Surprisingly, a day later it was mostly gone, much to our relief. It is possible another animal scavenger decided it was worth hauling away. We were most grateful the smell of death was no longer filling our house…
Just the week before this scripture section from the book of John, Martha warned Jesus that opening Lazarus’ tomb would release the inevitable stench of death. Yet when Lazarus was raised, the odor of death was overcome by renewal and restoration.
When Martha’s sister Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with an expensive fragrant oil, normally used in preparation for burial, it fills the entire house with its perfume. Jesus sees it as a harbinger for what is to come in the next week.
His faith in God’s plan means Jesus goes through enough to kill Him.
In this broken world, we live in the smudge and stench of mortal man’s smell of death, yet we are saved by this crushed, dying Savior who pours out a perfume of Himself for us.
Like Mary, let us also do what we can: filling God’s house with His fragrance.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”
But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. 2Kings 5: 1, 9-14
He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride; He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. ~John Bunyan from The Pilgrim’s Progress
Source: Pilgrim’s Progress,
Perhaps it was his plain talk about the Word of God. Perhaps it was his folksy stories tying that Word to our lives. Perhaps it was because he was, like the rest of us, so fully a flawed and forgiven human being.
Pastor Bruce Hemple ministered to thousands over his lifetime of service, yet the simple act of climbing the steps up to the pulpit at Wiser Lake Chapel was nearly impossible for him.
Bruce had one leg. The other was lost to an above the knee amputation due to severe diabetes. He wore an ill-fitting prosthetic leg that never allowed a normal stride and certainly proved a challenge when ascending stairs. He would come early to the sanctuary to climb the several steps to the chair behind the pulpit so he would not have to struggle in front of the congregation at the start of the service. As we would enter to find our pew seats, he would be deep in thought and prayer, already seated by the pulpit.
He often said he knew he was a difficult person to live with because of his constant pain and health problems. His family confirmed that was indeed true, but what crankiness he exhibited through much of the week evaporated once he was at the pulpit. Standing there balanced on his good leg with his prosthesis acting as a brace, he was transformed and blessed with clarity of thought and expression.
His pain was left behind.
He came to our church after many years of military chaplaincy, having served in Korea and Vietnam and a number of stateside assignments. He liked to say he “learned to meet people where they were” rather than where he thought they needed to be. His work brought him face to face with thousands of soldiers from diverse faiths and backgrounds, or in many cases, no faith at all, yet he ministered to each one in the way that was needed at that moment. He helped some as they lay dying and others who suffered so profoundly they wished they would die. He was there for them all and he was there for us.
One of his memorable sermons came from 2Kings 5:1-19 about the healing of the great and proud warrior Naaman who was afflicted with leprosy. Pastor Bruce clearly identified with Naaman and emphasized the message humility with obedience to God as the key to Naaman’s healing. Like Naaman, no one would desire “Seven Ducks in a Muddy Pond” but once Naaman was obedient despite his pride and doubts, he was cured of the incurable by bathing in the muddy Jordan River.
Even upon his retirement, Bruce continued to preach when churches needed a fill in pastor, and he took a part time job managing a community food and clothing bank, connecting with people who needed his words of encouragement. He was called regularly to officiate at weddings and funerals, especially for those without a church. He would oblige as his time and health allowed.
His last sermon was delivered on a freezing windy December day at a graveside service for a young suicide victim he had never known personally. Pastor Bruce was standing at the head of the casket and having concluded his message, he bowed his head to pray, continued to bend forward, appeared to embrace the casket and breathed his last.
He was gone, just like that.
He was not standing up high at the pulpit the day he died. He was obediently getting muddy in the muck and mess of life, and waiting, hoping, as we all are, for the moment he’d be washed clean.
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There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone. ~Sara Teasdale “There Will Come Soft Rains”
…one of man’s purposes is to assist God in the work of “hallowing” the things of Creation. By a tremendous heave of the spirit, the devout man frees the divine sparks trapped in the mute things of time; he uplifts the forms and moments of creation, bearing them aloft into the rare air and hallowing fire in which all clays must shatter and burst. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.
The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke. Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: “Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”
“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
There was again a division among the Jews because of these words.Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”
At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter,and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.I and the Father are one.”
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?”The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me;but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there. John 10: 17-42
Quiet he lies whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before. His breath (so slight it seems no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw, he dreams, hearing no music from his other spheres. Breath, mouth, ears, eyes he is curtailed who overflowed all skies, all years. ~Luci Shaw from “Mary’s Song”from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
When, in the cavern darkness, Jesus opened his small, bleating mouth (even before his eyes widened to the supple world his lungs had sighed into being), did he intuit how hungrily the lungs gasp? Did he begin, then, to love the way air sighs as it brushes in and out through the portals of tissue to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating? And how, fueled by air, the dazzling blood tramps the crossroads of the brain like donkey tracks, corpuscles skittering to the earlobes and toenails?
Bottle of the breath of God, speaking in stories, shouting across wild, obedient water, his voice was stoppered only by inquisition, unfaith and anguish. Did he know that he would, in the end, leak all his blood, heave a final groan and throw his breath, oxygen for the world, back to its Source before the next dark cave? ~Luci Shaw“Breath” from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
Greater than all – Creator of breath and sky and dust – yet came to us as helpless baby.
He who is the air we need – resides in our cells, our blood, our lungs, our heart.
He who lays down His life for us – then picks it up again – we are made in His image.
Listen for Him – watch Him change the sky – know He fills us wholly with His Words and Breath.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it. ~Boris Pasternak
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:— ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone. ~Walter De La Mare “The Listeners”
Years ago, a young woman I’d been treating for depression for several weeks in my clinic called unexpectedly on a Friday afternoon and canceled an upcoming appointment for the following Monday and did not reschedule.
The receptionist sent me a message as was our policy for patients who “cancel and do not reschedule.” It gave me a bad feeling that she was turning her back on her treatment plan and I was uneasy about the upcoming weekend without knowing what was going on with her.
I could have just put on my coat and headed home at the end of that long Friday after a very stressful work week and even more stressful year. I was discouraged about many aspects of my clinic work load and my after-hours responsibilities only seemed to get heavier. I was frustrated at how ineffectively I was communicating to administrative supervisors about the need for change.
I was ready to quit and walk away.
Even so, in a moment of clarity about my role and commitment to those I was responsible for, I called my patient to find out how she was doing. She didn’t answer her phone.
I mulled over my options. Protocol was to call the police to go to her address for a “well-being” check. I looked up her apartment address and decided instead to drive the few blocks to get there.
As I approached her door, I could hear someone moving around in her apartment, but she ignored my knocks and my voice and when I tried to open the door, it was locked.
So I stayed right there, talking to her through the door for about 15 minutes, letting her know I wasn’t leaving until she opened up the door. I finally told her she could decide to open the door or I would call 911 and ask the police to come to make sure she was okay. She then unlocked the door, tears streaming down her face. She had been drinking heavily, with liquor bottles strewn around on the floor. She admitted an intent to overdose on aspirin and vodka. The vodka was already consumed but the unopened aspirin bottle was in her hand.
I was the last person she expected to see at her door.
Miraculously, the inpatient mental health unit at the local hospital had an open bed. I told my patient that we could save time and hassle by heading over there together right then and there, and avoid the emergency room chaos and delay, and the possibility of an involuntary detainment.
She agreed to come with me and be admitted voluntarily for stabilization. When I went to the hospital to see ger the next day, she greeted me with a hug and thanked me for not giving up on her when she had given up on herself.
In sobriety, her eyes were brighter and she was more hopeful. She never expected anyone to care enough to come knock on her door when she was at her lowest point. It was the start of her climb out of her pain and depression.
Four years later, a small card arrived in my clinic mailbox on another most challenging work day from an unfamiliar address two thousand miles away. The name looked vaguely familiar to me but when I opened and read the contents, this time it became the knock on the door to get my attention, to focus the beating of my heart on what was most important – not the stresses of my work place — and it was my turn to let tears flow:
“Dear Doctor,
I am not sure if you will remember me considering you see a number of patients daily; however, I am a patient whose life you changed in the most positive way. I never truly THANKED YOU for listening to me and hearing my silent words of grief and hearing my cries for help. If it had not been for you, had you not knocked on my door, I would not be writing this letter to you today. I don’t know exactly what to say to the person who saved me from hurting myself fatally. You were a stranger in my life, but a dear friend in my time of need. THANK YOU, for everything that you did for me. You have a permanent place in my heart, you have given my spirit hope, you have reminded me that a life is worth living. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Sincerely, L_____”
Somehow I had the sense that I needed to go knock on her door because I was keeping my word to take care of her at her lowest point. I had the stubbornness to stay put until she responded, and most of all, I’m appreciative for her gracious note letting me know it made a difference.
When I needed it the most, she made a difference for me that kept me on the job for another twenty years.
With her letter, she knocked, oh so gently, on my own locked door. I opened it, amazed that someone cared enough to let me know I kept my word.
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We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet. ~Annie Dillard from The Force That Drives the Flower
What inference might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works? An inordinate fondness for beetles. The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other. ~ J.B.S. Haldane, British biologist
Indeed, we stranded folk do encounter a God who saves us by flipping us back onto our feet as we lie helplessly waving our arms and legs in the air, so stuck and pitiful.
God knows all about the helplessness of suffering and hears our cry for mercy.
Once we are righted back to our feet, we walk forth forever changed – restored to the world, ready to help anyone we encounter who finds themselves stuck upside down in their misery.
When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles… …they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle. ~ Dr. Seuss from Fox in Socks
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Henry Polis 1968Pouring the sidewalk by handGrouting the tile perimeter
Thirty-one years ago today we watched by your bedside as you labored, readying yourself to die; we could not help other than to be there while you slipped farther away from us.
This dying, the hardest work you had ever done:
harder than handling the plow behind a team of draft horses, harder than confronting a broken, alcoholic and abusive father, harder than slashing brambles and branches to clear the woods, harder than digging out stumps, shoring up foundations, fixing roofs, harder than shipping out to war, harder than leaving behind a new wife after a week of marriage, harder than leading a battalion to battle on Saipan, Tinian and Tarawa, harder than returning home so changed there were no words, harder than returning to school, working long hours to support family, harder than running a farm with nothing but muscle and will power, harder than coping with an ill wife, infertility, job conflict, discontent, harder than building your own garage, your own house, a pool, harder than ending your marriage, a second wife dying, and returning home forgiven.
Dying was the hardest of all as no amount of muscle or smarts could stop it from crushing you, you, who could do nearly anything you put your mind and muscle to, taking away the strength you relied on for nearly 73 years.
So as you lay helpless, moaning, struggling to breathe, we knew most of your hard work was complete; what was yet undone was not for us to finish up for you.
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As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” Some claimed that he was.
Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
“How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. John 9:1-12
The Lord came: what did He do? He set forth a great mystery. He spat on the ground, He made clay of His spittle; for the Word was made flesh. And He anointed the eyes of the blind man. The anointing had taken place, and yet he saw not. He sent him to the pool which is called Siloam. But it was John’s concern to call our attention to the name of this pool; and he adds, Which is interpreted, Sent. You understand now who it is that was sent; for had He not been sent, none of us would have been set free from iniquity. Accordingly he washed his eyes in that pool which is interpreted, Sent — he was baptized in Christ. ~Augustine from Tractate 44 on John
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod, And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
A man that looks on glass On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, And then the heav’n espy.
All may of Thee partake: Nothing can be so mean, Which with his tincture—”for Thy sake”— Will not grow bright and clean. ~George Herbert from “The Elixir”
We came from dust in the beginning, choosing to wallow in mud of our own making.
And Christ lives among us and our muddy messes.
Yet He is even more: when Christ heals the blind man, He mixes the dusty earth and His own spit — using holy mud to anoint unseeing eyes which heal glass-clear with washing.
Christ – sent to cleanse and restore us with God’s deep and abiding grace.
We once were blind, but now we see…
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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The talkative guest has gone, and we sit in the yard saying nothing. The slender moon comes over the peak of the barn.
The air is damp, and dense with the scent of honeysuckle. . . . The last clever story has been told and answered with laughter.
With my sleeping self I met my obligations, but now I am aware of the silence, and your affection, and the delicate sadness of dusk. ~Jane Kenyon, “The Visit” from Collected Poems
From morning suns and evening dews At first thy little being came: If nothing once, you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same; The space between, is but an hour, The frail duration of a flower. ~Philip Freneau from “The Wild Honey Suckle”
It sprang up wild along the chain link fence—thick, with glorious white and yellow summer blooms, and green tips that we pinched and pulled for one perfect drop of gold honey. But Dad hated it—hated its lack of rows and containment, its disorder. Each year, he dug, bulldozed, and set fire to those determined vines. But each year, they just grew back stronger. Maybe that’s why I felt the urge to plant it that one day in May, when cancer stepped onto my front porch and rang the doorbell, loose matches spilling out of its ugly fists. ~Karla Morton “Honeysuckle” from Accidental Origami: New and Selected Works
Some things are very dear to me– Such things as flowers bathed by rain Or patterns traced upon the sea Or crocuses where snow has lain . . . The iridescence of a gem, The moon’s cool opalescent light, Azaleas and the scent of them, And honeysuckles in the night. And many sounds are also dear– Like winds that sing among the trees Or crickets calling from the weir Or Negroes humming melodies. But dearer far than all surmise Are sudden tear-drops in your eyes ~Gwendolyn Bennett— Sonnet 2
I am an easy cryer. It takes very little to tip me over the edge: a hymn, a poem, simply witnessing a child’s joy.
Suddenly my eyes fill up.
I blame this on my paternal grandmother who was in tears much of the time while visiting our family, crying happy, crying sad, crying frustrated and angry tears, crying desperate tears after being diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. I think of her often as she was the age I am now, grateful I too have not been visited with such dire news.
My greatest trigger to weep myself is watching someone else tear up. I think my grandmother left behind some powerful empathy genes and I will honor that when I visit her grave this weekend to lay flowers.
I needed to desensitize my response to others’ tears to be effective as a physician/healer. Witnessing tears in the exam room is a normal part of the job: patients are anxious, ill, in pain or just need to decompress in safety. I learned early on to be unobtrusive and not interrupt, letting the flow of tears be part of how the patient was trying to communicate their distress. It was a struggle when my inclination was to cry right along with them.
But I needed to remain the rock in the room, solid and steady. I could understand their tears as yet another symptom of a clinical presentation, allowing me to observe without being clouded by my own emotional response.
Sometimes that worked. Sometimes not. At times overwhelmed myself, I wept at births, I wept at deaths, I wept at the sharing of bad news.
Now retired and liberated from the exam room, I freely and regularly weep at the state of the world, or when I read of disaster and tragedy, and especially when I witness intentional harm and cruelty in others. I’m no longer a stone, but more like an over-filled sponge being squeezed – everything builds up until I can hold it no more.
Reading headlines in the news is sometimes more than I can bear. I cry myself dry.
And that is okay, thanks to Grandma. Once emptied out, I can be filled again by so much that is good and precious and beautiful in this life – a sad and delicate dusk, the promising light of dawn, the persistence of the wild honeysuckles, the raindrops on colorful blooms, the resonance of a heartfelt spiritual, the love of my husband, children, grandchildren and friends.
Now those are worth weeping over.
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