what makes you weep?

“Check times and places where you weep and you will see the places where God was getting through to you… We should weep at church: Weep for the death of Jesus, weep for the love of God, weep for our sins, weep for our salvation, weep for the poor, weep for the dead, weep for the dying, weep for the frightened, the lonely, the lost and the oppressed. When we do not weep I worry that we have not heard the Word, or we have left our feelings at home, or they are so deeply buried that prayer and scripture and song and sermon will not reach them.”

                                                                        Frederick Buechner

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What brings tears to your eyes?

Does anything bring tears to your eyes?

It is an important question

For it tells one much about his, or her heart

It is telling that the plight of the people in the detention camps

Brought tears to the eyes of AOC, and many others

It is telling that the sight of those same people, crowded together

Hopeless, unwashed, crowded,

Brought nothing but a scowl to the face of Mr. Pence

What brings tears to your eyes?

Yesterday I participated in a memorial service for

A kind and gentle man

His family held the service on what would have been the 73^rd anniversary

Of he and his wife, Irene

As friends and family gathered after the service

To share and reflect

The granddaughter cued up one of this man, Kenneth’s

Favorite songs

One he used to hum, even after Alzheimers began to make his lost and confused

“Goodnight Irene”

As that song played, Irene, 90 plus years young

Danced with a friend

Her daughter had tears in her eyes

So did her granddaughter

So did it

I sometimes have tears in my eyes when I watch a moive

With a happy ending

Or watch a mother look at her newborn child

I have tears in my eyes when the sun comes up

And when it goes down

And there are tears when the milky way sprawls across

The deep darkness of a rural sky

I have tears when I remember my dad, who died over 30 years

Of cancer

And my mother who quickly followed him

Both dead before they reached 70

I have tears when I see pictures of beloved pets, now gone

And tears when we sing my favorite carols on Christmas eve

I have tears when I remember little babies, dying in northern Iraq

After the first gulf war

Dying in spite of all we did to try and save them

Tears when I remember malnourished children living in the dump

In Mexico City

I have tears when I remember those times

When I failed to be there for my children

Because I was too busy being a minister

There is nothing wrong with weeping

Mary wept at the foot of the cross

Peter wept when he denied the Christ

The people of Israel wept when they realized they had abandoned God’s way

We can weep about loss

Weep about failure

Weep about cruelty

We can weep about inequity and injustice

Weeping means we are awake to what is going on around us

Weeping means we are awake to what is going on inside us

Weeping means we are awake

To pain

But also love

To fear

But also hope

Weeping can lead us in the house of the Sacred

Into the realm of the Spiritual

"With weeping they will come, And by supplication I will lead them; I will make them walk by streams of waters, On a straight path in which they will not stumble… “ (Jeremiah 31:9)

So let us “check times and places where [we] weep

and [we] will see the places where God is getting through…