Pastor’s Corner: A Song Let Them Cry

September 5, 2018

It popped up on my Twitter feed on a Friday morning, this quote from Michael McKean:

“Sometimes people say a song made them cry when they mean a song let them cry.”

The truth of that ran through me like an electric current through a wire. The same truth applies, I’m sure, to those movie moments that choke me up, and the paragraphs in novels that find me sniffling, or the poetic lines that gaze up from the page as I wipe the tears away.

Those tears have been waiting to flow. They may be tears of sadness or regret. But as R. Douglas Fields wrote in Psychology Today (“When Music Makes You Cry,” Sept. 28, 2017), crying is a complex human behavior. We cry with happiness, sadness, awe, wonder, and so many other emotions.

Those tears flowing at the prompting of the music may have arisen from the joy of a family wedding, the sorrow of a loved one’s passing, the wonder of a magnificent vista, the ache of injustice, or, of course, the simple awe of beautiful music beautifully performed.

Whatever their source, let the tears come. They’re flowing for a reason – probably for more than one reason. Let them come, and let them go, and if they’re lurking behind your eyelids, well, go find that song, or that movie, or that book, or that poem, and give them their time. There is, after all, a time to weep as well as a time to dance.

If we have not wept in its time, will we be ready to dance when its time comes?

With aloha,

Pastor Eric

The image is “Crying Eye” by muffintop04. Used by permission under Creative Commons license.