“Real tears are a prayer beyond words”. ~Christian Wiman

I struggle with my tears which seem to come unbidden at embarrassing times… like when people sing “happy birthday” to someone or when the pastor at church offers a heartfelt blessing to each person in the pews.  I cry at weddings and funerals, over poems and graduations.  My friends are familiar with this.  A friend once joked that I would cry if she read the phonebook to me.  Others who are not criers have asked for lessons!

            So, this quote has been reassuring.  Tears as prayers.  How I love that idea.  After years of therapy I have decided that possibly my frequent tears are not some deeply repressed sadness, but are perhaps the opposite.  They somehow feel freed to appear when there is an opening for joy!  (Or that feels at least partially true!!)

Here is a poem for you from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (see more of her wonderful poems by clicking HERE)

Contentment – by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And there, beneath the white tent,

beneath the blue sky, beneath the stars

I could not see, while spinning somewhere

inside a spiral galaxy, I closed my eyes

and let the sound of flute and piano find me,

an Irish song meant to be played with a wee lilt,

though the tune itself knew something of loss,

and I felt my lungs swell and my heart expand

felt my spine straighten and my soles ground,

and I floated inside the music, stunned and surprised

by the vibrant inheritance of being alive. I hummed

with full cellular resonance and then, I was crying

—a warm spilling of tears—for what?

for beauty? for loss? for living with both in one breath?

What was it the tears meant? Oh friends,

as I felt it all with no attempt to push it away,

I was wildly, alively content.