Nothing binds us together like tears of the heart
My heart immediately felt the crushing despair flowing like a river through the tears of my newfound friend. He is an Irish man of my generation. A musician and mystic.
I’d heard him speak before, and internally identified that he was my kind of guy, a fella who had found some light at the end of the long dark night. But now his world was well and truly shattered. Calamity had come calling with the sudden death of his son.
Zoom meeting can be, let’s just say, on the cold side of human interactions. But not this one. He told his story of the hours just passed. Devastated by grief, he had left the bedside of his lifeless son and made his way to a sober booze hound meeting. A place where he had found much comfort for the past forty years.
But it was the 4th of July in America and even the sober booze hound meeting was closed. Turning to leave, he suddenly heard the muffled murmurs of some people in a small adjoining room. Turns out that three undocumented migrant workers had gathered together to hold their own little meeting, anyway.
My friend literally fell weeping into the open embrace of these three. They then spent the next hour or two sharing stories of loss and gain, heartache and joy, tears of the heart and newfound hope. “They were a gift from the Higher Power,” his broken voice boldly declared.
It is written that, “Blessed are those who morn, for they will be comforted.” But who knew that the comfort would come near the back of beyond, in the arms of three quintessential outsider people?
I was among those who wept freely with him during telling of this tale some hours later in a Zoom meeting. Here was a spirituality you could bet your life on. A spirituality of the real. Real sorrow, real courage, real comfort offered by real people.
Nothing binds us together like tears of the heart. There was a time on my journey when my heart was a like a stone. If I want reassurance that my long spiritual quest—flawed as it is—is not in vain. It is that my heart is not like that now. It is quick to tears and equally quick to joy, and it knows for sure that there is deep beauty in both, especially when they flow in solidarity with others.
We all need the great comfort of the Spirit when calamity makes its claim. Often, we’ll find it in the least likely places. Like the arms of soft-hearted, quintessential outsiders whose tears flow freely with our own wounded weeping hearts.
May the Spirit bring great comfort to my music making mystic friend. For we meet the living Spirit, comrades out on the margins, near the back of beyond, tending to the tears of the broken-hearted people.
Nothing binds us together like tears of the heart! There’s beauty in our broken spaces, and comfort in the strangest places.
– Cormac Stagg, author of The Quest for a Humble Heart