Tears

 

By Marilyn Moore

They come suddenly, sometimes at the sight, or sound, of something that is nearly unspeakably wondrous.  Sometimes from loss, or fear, or frustration.  Sometimes springing from great pain, or great joy.  I know that there are some experiences that almost always bring tears to my eyes: hearing “Taps” played in a cemetery, seeing a tender moment between a parent and a child, reading beloved lines of poetry, standing at the top of Flattop Mountain or seeing a sunset at the farm, hearing the choral music from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, remembering my mom’s voice, or the feel of my dad’s wool coat.   All of those, and countless more, tears guaranteed….

But what about those moments when tears are a surprise…when you think to yourself, I wonder where that came from…and you wonder if anyone else noticed, and if they did, should you try to explain what you already know you can’t explain, or just shrug your shoulders, or lift an eyebrow, as if to say, “I don’t know….did this just happen to you, too?”  

Frederick Buechner is a favorite writer.  About those unexpected tears, he says, “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…you should go next.”

I’ve been thinking about those unexpected tears, so I took intentional notice of those times over the past couple of weeks…where I was, what was happening, what were the words, or events, or sounds, that caused my throat to clutch and my eyes to water….

Singing an anthem, these words, “All embracing Church…by the font and meal, signed and marked and sealed…” Tears of anguish, perhaps, at all the times the Church, including the denomination of my lifelong church, has been anything but embracing.  Tears of thankfulness for those moments when the Church has indeed embraced all.  Tears of wonder, and wonderment, of “signed and marked and sealed….” Just what does this mean…..

In the movie “Coco,” on stage at the Lied with a big-sound live Mariachi band, Miguel is signing “Remember Me” to Coco, his grandmother, who is almost literally brought to life by these words and this melody….tears of joy at the power of music and the love between a boy and his grandma….

Listening to a mom describe her child’s improvement in reading after a one-semester specialized reading program, “I don’t ever hear her read one word, one sentence, or one book, without realizing all over again the power of her teacher.”  Tears of gratitude for this teacher, and for all teachers, who every single day teach a skill of value to a learner, and the impact lasts forever….

In the Big 10 documentary about Nebraska Volleyball, the video of the team walking through the tunnel to enter the stadium, where 98,000+ fans were waiting.  The camera was from behind them, and as the team approached the tunnel opening, the players reached for each other’s hands, walking hand-in-hand toward that event that was unknown, but bigger than they could have imagined.  Tears of memory, and gratitude, for the many times I’ve reached for a friend’s hand, a colleague’s hand, knowing I would not be alone with whatever was on the other side of that door….

From the play “Not Too Far Distant,” two such moments.  When George, the staff sergeant from Nebraska who is in France and Germany during WWII, reads letters from his wife, Gretchen, and writes back to her that he so appreciates her letters, “…a letter is like a little piece of home on a page.”  I remember the times when I was far from home, when phone calls were expensive and letters were the only way to communicate, how glad I was to get a letter from Mom, filled with all the ordinary news of the day, and home didn’t seem so far away….  George’s words brought those tears of loneliness, and no-longer-so-lonely, right to the surface again.  

And at the end of the play, a young man’s words, speaking to George in the latter years of his life, “Some of history is really hard to talk about, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”  Tears of despair that we should be hearing voices in this day that want to shut down the hard-to-talk-about history, and tears of determination to not let those stories go untold.   

Listening to a non-profit board member describe the moment when the organization whose board she chairs had successfully raised the funds to complete the payment for the building they had purchased, “So I drove to the bank, and wrote the check, and paid off the mortgage!”  This is one of Lincoln’s many fine non-profits, but I think these words, and the resulting tears, were more than just this building…it’s tears of celebration of the importance of home, and sorrow that there are people who will never know that comfort of having a place to call home….

There have been other times of tears in the past two weeks, but not unexpected.  It’s Thanksgiving time, and preparation for Christmas, and hymns from those two holidays always bring tears.  We celebrated Dorothy Jo’s life, and how can you celebrate a woman who lived to be 99 with such vigor without crying both in celebration and in loss.  The news coverage daily of the damage and destruction and loss of life, first in Israel and now in Gaza, must certainly bring any person of compassion to tears.  How can we not find a better way to resolve long-standing and deeply-held conflicts….but I digress, that’s another blog, for another day…..

It's the unexpected tears that caught my attention the past couple of weeks, and still leave me wondering what they say to me about the secret of who I am, and from where I have come, and to where I might be called….  

I often say that I write to figure out what I think, and that is especially so in this case, but I’m not there yet.  It’s not finished, I’m not finished.  I invite you to join the blog, with your own stories of unexpected tears…..