The Gamut of Tears

Put my tears

in Your bottle.

Are they not

in Your book?

~Psalm 56:8

Oh, this post feels like a pile of patchwork squares without a pattern inside of me. The subject of tears for me is vast; and in my quotations search, it seemed that every door of thought was opened as I read. Plagued with a propensity toward rabbit-trailing, I feel especially disjointed.

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Mark Antony says, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now." Ha! I used to hear the same thing from fellow retreat-going peers who had the well-exercised ability to turn emotions on and off like a faucet. Tears on demand. Yeah, I could write an entire essay on that alone.

One evening during the months immediately preceding the death of my mother, I asked, “Mama, do you ever cry?” (I had only seen her cry twice in my entire life, and there we sat staring the end of her life in the face.) I just wanted to know. She looked at me and said, simply, “I cry in the shower.”

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

My tendency to go long without shedding tears, even when I feel turned completely inside-out, has been an issue at times -- this privacy of tears. Yet, tears have a purpose and a place. Isn't it written, "To everything there is a season . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh"? Lately, they seem to be on the heels of each other, and there are plenty of quotations that would "nod" as if to empathize.

Some quotes to ponder in this tearful season:

I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry.
~Cat Stevens

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
~Kahlil Gibran

*sigh*

In a feeble effort to pull some of this together, I'll return to the images that opened this post . . .

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.
~Romans 12:15

You may forget the one with whom you have laughed,
but never the one with whom you have wept.
~Kahlil Gibran (Gibran again? I need to sidebar with him.
How could I forget the ones with whom I have laughed?)

The description of the lachrymatory (now isn't that a big word for a little thing?) is a quotation from the book, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells. I'm not promoting the book here, but if you want to know what a Ya-Ya is, the following quotation sums it up:

"YAYA -- a group of three or more women whose hearts and souls are joined together by laughter and tears shared through the glorious journey of life"

Pass me that little bottle, please.

~End Quote