Tag: weeping

A Recipe For Good Medicine

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raindrops1315

 

A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.
~Ray Bradbury from Dandelion Wine

Most days in clinic we see tears, lots of them.  We keep boxes of tissues strategically placed in the exam and consult rooms,  as well as the waiting room.  Life can seem overwhelming, fear and worry proliferate unchecked and floodgates spillover occurs when just one more thing happens — maybe a failed test, a fight with a family member, a lingering fatigue that just might be some dread disease.

We underestimate how therapeutic a good cry can be, almost as helpful as deep and heart felt laughter.  Stress and tension is dissipated, endorphins are released, muscles relax.  Holding back tears, like trying not to laugh (think Mary Tyler Moore at Chuckles the Clown’s funeral service) is hard work and cab only make things worse.

So I hand out kleenex like candy and tell my patients to just let it go and flow.  I’m an easy crier myself, and will cry at the drop of a hat with very little provocation — a certain hymn in church, a beautiful word picture, a poignant memory, or sometimes in exhaustion and frustration.  Tears are a visible tangible connection with what is happening to us and around us and to others.   They can be more honest than what we say and do.

When the weeping wanes,   I always recommend a good night’s sleep.

And chocolate.

Good medicine without a pharmacist.

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Sudden Ends of Time

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These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time.
~Richard Wilbur from “Year’s End”

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.  They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.
~Frederick Buechner

I’m not paying close enough attention if  I’m too busy looking for kleenex.  It seems the last couple weeks I have had more than ample opportunity to find out the secret of who I am, where I have come from and where I am to be next, and I’m loading my pockets with kleenex, just in case.

It mostly has to do with welcoming our children, their spouses and their friends back home for the holidays to become a full out noisy messy chaotic household again, with lots of music and laughter and laundry and meal preparation.  It is about singing grace together before a meal and choking on precious words of gratitude.  It certainly has to do with bidding farewell again, as we begin to do a few hours from now and, to gather them in for the hug and then unclasping and letting go, urging and encouraging them to go where their hearts are telling them they are needed and called to be.  I too was let go once and though I would try to look back, too often in tears, I knew to set my face toward the future.  It led me here, to this farm, this marriage, this family, this work, to more tears, to more letting go, as it will continue if I live long enough to weep again and again with gusto and grace.

This is where I should go next: to love so much and so deeply that letting go is so hard that tears are no longer unexpected or a mystery to me.   They release the fullness that can no longer be contained: God’s still small voice spilling down my cheeks drop by drop like wax from a burning candle.  No kleenex needed.  Let it flow.

adventfull2

Awaiting His Arrival: From Weeping to Salvaged

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snowremnant

And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.
Luke 2: 33-35

 

Lacrymosa
Dolorosa
Voca Me
Libera
Salva Me

You are the voice that calls in the silence
You are the light that shines in the dark
You hold me if I were falling
Hear me if I am calling
Salva Me

You are the words of the song
Lacrymosa
You are the light
Dolorosa
You are the music that plays
Voca Me, Libera
You are the voice
Salva me
You are the day

Lacrymosa
Dolorosa
Voca Me
Libera
Salva Me

You are the words of the song in the sunrise
You are the music that plays at the dawn
You hold me in any sorrow
See me through every shadow
Salva Me

You are the words of the song
Lacrymosa
You are the light
Dolorosa
You are the music that plays
Voca Me, Libera
You are the voice
Salva me
You are the day

Lacrymosa
Dolorosa
You are the voice that calls in the silence
You are the words of the song
You are the light
You are the voice
You are the music that plays
You are the voice
You are the light
You are the day
~adapted for Libera from Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals (Aquarium)

 

 

wwudry2

Awaiting His Arrival: From Woe to Joy to Weeping

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wwugrass2

wwugrass

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”
Matthew 2: 18

I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.
Luke 2: 10b

 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 
On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary,
and they bowed down and worshiped him.
Matthew 2: 10-11

This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be spoken against,
 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.
And a sword will pierce your own soul too.
Luke2:34-35

wwubuds2

Villagers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall be yours in the morning!

    Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
Blowing fingers and stamping feet,
Come from far away you to greet—
You by the fire and we in the street—
Bidding you joy in the morning!

    Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow—
Saw the star o’er a stable low;
Mary she might not further go—
Welcome thatch, and litter below!
Joy was hers in the morning!

    And then they heard the angels tell
‘Who were the first to cry NOWELL?
Animals all, as it befell,
In the stable where they did dwell!
Joy shall be theirs in the morning!’
~Kenneth Grahame, The Carol of the Field Mice from Wind in the Willows

wwupinkdec

Ill with Thirst

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galena

raindrops1126

…we invite him purely and simply,
so that our thought of him is an invitation,
a longing cry.
It is as when one is in extreme thirst,
ill with thirst;
then one no longer thinks of the act of drinking in relation to oneself,
nor even of the act of drinking in a general way.
One merely thinks of water,
actual water itself,
but the image of water is like a cry from our whole being.
~Simone Weil from “Waiting for God”

octobermtbakerpicturelake

 

octobermtbakerarea

raindrops11261

Worlds of Wanwood Leafmeal

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blueberryleaf

noaanya

dande11149

 

~to a young child~

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring and Fall”
mapleleftovers
pondyard
sunsetkids

My Heart Bleeds

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nov14leaves

fog101919

A weft of leafless spray
Woven fine against the gray
Of the autumnal day,
And blurred along those ghostly garden tops
Clusters of berries crimson as the drops
That my heart bleeds when I remember
How often, in how many a far November,
Of childhood and my children’s childhood I was glad,
With the wild rapture of the Fall,
Of all the beauty, and of all
The ruin, now so intolerably sad.
~William Dean Howells  “November: Impression”

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novfield

Final Flood of Color

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vinemapleharry1
photo by Harry Rodenberger

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable.
You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact.
When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.
~Clive James (who is terminally ill)  from this week’s New Yorker

vinemapleharry2
photo by Harry Rodenberger

My Dripping Sleep

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rainyclothesline3

rainygrass

 

I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry,
thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry.
Then I looked at the window and thought:
Why, yes, it’s just the rain, the rain, always the rain,
and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.
~Ray Bradbury

rainyclover

rainyweeds

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Bare November

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branches3

branches6

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me…

She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days…
~Robert Frost from “My November Guest”

November,
month of darkening,
now transformed
to a recounting of gratitude
of daily thanksgiving and blessings~~

it is good to dwell on our gifts,
even so,
I invite Sorrow
to sit in silence with me,
her tears blending with mine.

These deepening days
of bare stripped branches
feed my growing need
for the covering grace
of His coming light.

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