Tears: Helping Us See Clearly

Like a lot of men, I have very little experience with personal tears. I bet that I have such limited experience with tears that I can name 90% of the times I have had tears (not as the result of being kicked in the groin or allergies):

1. I “sports cried” when I watch Dirk hold up the 2011 NBA championship. Yes, I joined the rest of the human race in tearing up watching the opening sequence in “Up”.

2. I was caught off guard when tears came over me when I was talking about the beauty and brokenness of the UMC after returning from General Conference 2016.

3. When I was appointed to a new church and had to say goodbye to a dear friend, I was grateful that she was shorter than I was so she could not see me ugly cry when we hugged for one of the last times.

4. Seeing my children for the first time was a big tear moment. So was waiting at the end of the center isle when those doors flung open and there stood the one person who I was about to make covenantal vows with. Then there was those two times where I sat in a parking lot and heard a song that made my eyes so red that I drove around the block just to try to minimize my eyes puffiness.

5. I suppose there where those three Easter sermons over the years where I was so moved by the story of light and hope and resurrection accompanied by images of love and delight that were also very tearful.

That is it.

There are many stories of ancient desert Christians (called the Abbas and Ammas) that feature tears or weeping. Often in these stories, tears and weeping come with of some understanding of sin or awareness of truth or revelation of love. In fact, it might be argued that tears did not come as a result of new awareness but the new awareness was the result of tears.

Meaning, it was the tears that helped the ancient one see more clearly than they had before.

We are told that tears in our eyes cloud our vision, however, that is not always true. Many times tears allow us to see more clearly by washing out what was clouding our vision to begin with. Tears are not the product of, but the initiation to new sight.

Maybe this is why so many of us (and I am talking to myself here) are blind. We have little experience with tears to wash out our blind spots and ignorance.

The Good Little Giants “Birdsong” has a stanza that goes:

Sometimes a grown man cries
To grieve the years he spent believing lies
He sees more clearly now through tears in his eyes
Maybe sometimes, baby, sometimes

And so, may we be blessed with tears.

Forgive, Judge, and See - Stepping Away From the Fires of Hell

Picking up from the previous post "COMMENT, COMPLAIN, CRITIQUE, CONTEMPT - THE SUBTLE STEPS TO THE FIRES OF HELL," I offer up a way to think about moving away from contempt. 

A recent email newsletter from Fr. Richard Rohr said Pope John XXIII had a motto which was translated as, “See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little.” Rohr refined this motto to read: "See everything; judge little; forgive much." It is this three fold pattern that might give us the tools to step away from contempt. First the visual then a bit of explination:

Contempt is among the most difficult things to step away from. Moving away from contempt requires dramatic action. We may not desire dramatic moving away when we are close to contempt toward another. Specifically, we are to forgive much. Forgive wholesale and trust that you will have time to sort out the specifics later. Like running from a fire, the first thing to do is get to safe ground before you assess what needs to be done next. Contempt is a fire that can consume all things and so running from it by way of forgiving wholesale is the first step. Assessments can be made on the way forward. 

If you find that you are close to criticism toward another, then it is important to judge less. Remember we all see only through a mirror dimly and what we see in another person is only a small slice of the whole pie. There are situations going on in their lives that you are unaware of that are contributing to actions you don't understand. Notice that it is not "do not judge" but rather "judge little." While the ideal may be to not judge at all, humans are not able to do this. It is more realistic that we aim to judge little.

Finally, if you find that you are close to complaining, then open your eyes and see more. Not only are we not seeing the other clearly, but we also tend to see ourselves in pure and sinless light. We are the "gold standard" by which we think all things should be judged. We often overlook our own failings/shortcomings. See everything means examine your own motives and actions. 

The goal is to bring us back to comments. Comments are without judgement and are seeking clarification. Despite the "comment" section of most online platforms are full of critique and contempt, comments are the clay that we can use to shape healthy relationships.

A psychic, convict, billionaire fisherman that does not exist

Take three minutes to watch this commercial made by Canon.

“He stood on his soapbox and told us a parable
of a man with eye-glasses so small they’re unwearable.
And the moral of the story is that it all looks terrible,
depending on what you look through, what you look through.”

— The Grandson of Jesus - by Cloud Cult

Within this video you saw one man walk into the studio six different times to meet a different photographer each time. Each photographer was given a backstory of the man. One photographer was told the man was a former convict another was told he was a billionaire and another told he was a psychic. After each photographer heard a backstory of the man, they then took their photos. After developing the film each of the six pictures were hung on a string side by side. The photographers all came into the room and examined the different photographs. It was at this time that the photographers were told that the man was not any of the things they each heard in the backstory. 

That is when the video comes to it's point: a photograph is shaped more by the person behind the camera than what is in front of it. 

So taking this metaphor out a bit, it is important to be mindful that how you see is influenced by what you think. The world is broken in areas, however this does not mean the world is going to hell in a hand basket. We are more inclined to see what we want to see and we are more blind that we want to believe we are. 

What story are you telling about yourself? What stories are you telling about those you work with? Live with? Dislike? Admire? God?

Another difference in self-help and spiritual formation

The self help industry is a huge monster of a thing that is a weird mix of accurate and pseudo versions of different disciplines. One of those disciplines that is in the mixture of self help is the discipline of spirituality. 

I would like to point out Christian spiritual formation is different from many expressions of self help. This is not to say that the self help world is wrong or inaccurate in the many claims made. Rather, it is more of a philosophical difference that I would like to bring to the surface. For instance, the difference Christianity and self help has with cracks and imperfections. Still others have written on how each Christianity and self help understand happiness differently.

Another difference that in Christianity and self help is how each of these philosophies understand vision.

The self help world understands vision like much of the academic world I encountered, which says something like this: Everyone sees the world through a set of lenses. You were born with a set of lenses that you see the world through and as we grew our lenses changed some but we still had these lenses on our eyes that colored the world as we experienced it. Thus the goal of education and self help is to teach us to examine these lenses so that we might see how it is our vision is different from others who see the exact same world.

Now this is not an inaccurate metaphor for how we see the world. However, what makes Christian spirituality different is that we do not think that we have lenses, but in fact that we are blind and cannot see. This is why the spiritual life is one that embraces humility, because we cannot see. Paul said that we see through dark glass, but he only said this after he was literally blinded. It is only when we come to the reality that we cannot see that we then can take the steps to admit that all the lenses we wear are dark at best. 

Yes we have lenses we see the world through and it is important to examine those lenses. However, the first step in Christian formation is to have our eyes opened, then we can clean the lenses.