A time to laugh and a time to cry: God’s own medicine

Last weekend I travelled with a dear friend Alex to my little brother “Our Jack’s” wedding. Alex had asked if she come as my plus one and I happily agreed. We had a wonderful weekend away together. She has moved to London this week and I know we will both miss each other massively. We made the most of last weekend and there was a great deal of laughter and tears shared.

I have over recent years conducted and participated in several family funerals. It is my role to hold folk through this painful and tear filled rights of passage. This included two younger cousins last year. The last time I was up in North Yorkshire where our Jack lives, it was to conduct his dad’s funeral. Jack’s dad was my step dad growing up. He was a difficult man, who had many children. Jack is the same age as his eldest daughter’s granddaughter. To say I had a difficult time growing up with him is an understatement. All of we siblings were deeply affected by our formative years. Following his funeral I went through a difficult personal time, it certainly contributed to my marriage failure. It took a long time to come to terms with the complex emotions that followed his death. The last few years have been a time for healing.

Last weekend proved this to me; it proved how much healing has occurred in recent years; last weekend was a time of great joy, filled with humour and so much laughter. The journey home with Alex, in which we stopped a few times, visiting little Yorkshire villages, may well have been one of the most joyful, fun and laughter filled few hours of my life. It will live with me for years.

There were many amusing moments throughout the wedding. One of bride’s party thought I was Jack’s dad. When he discovered I was conducting the service, he almost died of shock, I was not what he expected. The service was humour filled and our Jack burst into laughter at the line “With my body I honour you” for the ring blessing. The service was beautifully received by all and I feel that it was a ritual that brought healing for so many of us.

The speeches were a mixed bag. Our Jack’s was fantastic, the others not so much. What was amusing was the constant running commentary of Jack’s dad’s oldest friend, who was not too pleased with the father of the bride. It went of four hours. We all shared a wonderful few hours together. I think the most amusing on going conversation was the one attempting to explain how and it what ways we are all related and connected. My sister topped it off with a diagram she drew for her partner in a vain attempt to explain it all. It was futile but brought a great deal of joy and laughter in the end.

The weekend felt like one of joy and healing. Yes, there were tears and I know for many folk there is more healing needed. I felt in myself it was a rite of passage that proved to me that I have healed from some of my own pain. There are memories that will stay with me all my life. It proved to me once more that there is always a time to laugh and a time to cry.

Earlier we shared those timeless words from Ecclesiastes 3:

“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” And the seasons turn and pass and come again. There is “A time to weep and a time to laugh”. Over the last few years these words have taken on a whole new and deeper meaning. I suspect post Covid I wept more than I have ever done and by the same token I suspect I laughed more than I have ever done. I know for a fact I felt more than I ever done. I have never been more alive. I have lived with an un-defended heart and have seen the truth that this truly is the only way to live. I have felt every breath, I have not turned away. I have never felt the presence of God more deeply. This beautiful sense of calm, that still small voice in the core of my being, that love that passeth all understanding. I felt this powerfully last weekend and these last few days since. There have been tears, there has been joy and there has been laughter too.

Now I’ve not always been the kind of man who was easily moved to tears. I was as a boy, but not always as a man. There have been seasons of my life where there were few if any tears, those times when nothing touched me. I can hardly remember those seasons sadly, sometimes trying to remember those soulless days can bring tears to my eyes today.

The seasons of my life that I remember by heart and not merely head are the ones in which I have shed tears. Whether they were tears of joy; tears of sorrow; tears of awe; tears of pain; tears of frustration; tears of relief; tears of laughter. These are the thick seasons when the most profound experiences of life have occurred and deeper understanding has usually followed. During these moments I have learnt what it means to be alive. These moments have shaped my soul and built my character.

I wonder what this coming season will bring? For seasons come and seasons go, just like the cherry blossom that has half fallen now.

There is a time to live, even when we feel heartbroken, when we cry. The best funerals are often filled with joy and laughter as we remember our times with our lost loved ones. Those precious memories. I have noticed also that when I am with family we often share memories that bring laughter, even deeply painful and confusing ones. I think it is something about surviving and or being with those who you love and care about so much. You see just like sadness and tears laughter is a communal experience; just as we bind together in our tears and suffering we are also bound together in our joy and laughter. When people laugh together there is nothing more beautiful, it can be infectious too.

Now I’m not talking about the kind of laughter and humour that is simply mocking, especially of those weaker in society, I’m not sure this is humour at all. It certainly isn’t inspired by joyousness, more cynicism, which no one is immune from,

Spiritual freedom brings with it the ability to laugh and not to take yourself too seriously, but it’s not about picking at other people’s perceived faults and inadequacies. This does not bring people together it just aids a sense of superiority at the expense of another. There is nothing liberating or freeing in this.

Now religion and spirituality are not often arenas where humour is obviously found and yet I have come to know that the more spiritually liberated I have become, and the more religious in its truest sense I have become, the more I have discovered my own funny bones. When I saw life as a tragedy I never felt more alone and yet when I began to see life more as kind of divine comedy with tragic elements I began to feel a part of life once more.

The ancient Greeks understood this. From their religious rituals grew two forms of theatre. One was tragedy and the other was comedy, the rituals of Dionysius incorporated both elements. The tragedies motto was “woe is me”, they portrayed situations in which the people, due to their natures, were fated to focus on their own suffering. Whereas the comedies motto was “Get over yourself”, they too expressed situations that included suffering but in these tales the people were enabled to discover ways out of these situations.

Comedy is there in the Abrahamic faiths too. There is a rich tradition of humour in Judaism, but humour is also a part of both Christian and Islamic traditions. Mulla Nasruddhin is the archetype of the holy fool. The early Christian Desert Father’s found humour within their spirituality. “In Stories of the Spirit” Jack Kornfield recounts a saying of Abba Or, who said “Either flee from people, or laugh at the world and the people in it, and make a fool of yourself in many things.” Humour is also found in the traditions of the East too, certainly in many of the Buddhist tales. It saddens me that in the modern age so much of this seems to have got lost as the poe faced and more puritanical factions have become the dominant elements in religion. And yet as Karl Barth has claimed “laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.”

“Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.”

Why is this you might well ask? Well because laughter brings us together, it takes us beyond the confines of our narrow selves. It takes us beyond the confines of our own thinking minds, it helps not to take ourselves too seriously and opens our hearts beyond the confines of our own egos, there is a reason that it is said to be the best medicine. Life is far too serious a business to be taken too seriously. As J.B. Priestly claimed “There is in happiness an element of self-forgetfulness. You lose yourself in something outside yourself when you are happy; just as when you are desperately miserable you are intensely conscious of yourself, you are a solid little lump of ego weighing a ton.”

There is a place for silliness, especially in the most difficult of times. The journey home last weekend was one of the most joyful few hours I have ever spent as my friend and I entertained one another. We shared ridiculous stories from our own lives, including some painful and tragic ones. She is approaching the first anniversary of the tragic death of her brother. We shared many moments of joy together, but also deep pain too.

I cannot repeat some of the things we talked about, I will leave that to your imaginations. I also attempted to explain to her how my family members are related to one another. It was a futile effort, but it filled us both with joy and laughter. A beautiful few hours of loving connection and memories that will stay with me for ever. We made laughter memories with each other. The laughter bound us together.

It brought to mind some rather lovely words by the Bendictine nun and author Joan Chittister.

“Humor gives a people dignity in situations that denigrate them. Laughter gives us relief from the burden of dailiness. No amount of coercion can break an unbreakable spirit, humor teaches us.. . . Humor cuts oppressors down to size, takes their sting away, renders them powerless to destroy us. Don't give in to what diminishes you. Learn to laugh at it and reduce its power over you.”

This reminded me of some words by the great pre-war theologian Harry Emerson Fosdick, he wrote “Happiness at its deepest and best is not the portion of a cushioned life which never struggled,...bore hardships, or adventured in sacrifice for costly aims. A heart of joy is never found in luxuriously coddled lives, but in men and women who achieve and dare, who have tried their powers against antagonisms, who have met even sickness and bereavement and have tempered their souls in fire…”

An undefended heart is one that both gives and receives laughter. The journey home together, proved this once more to me. Laughter memories that will stay with me forever. We both felt the Love Divine within us.

As John O’Donohue claimed "I think that laughter is one of the really vital dimensions of the divine presence that has been totally neglected.

I often feel when the Divine One beholds us obsessed in our intricate maze of anxiety and planning and intentionality, that She can’t stop laughing.

It’s great for people, actually, to laugh, too. I love a sense of humour in a person. It’s one of my favorite things, because I think when somebody laughs, they break out of every system that they’re in.

There’s something really subversive in laughter and in the smile on the human face. It’s lovely and infectious to be in the company of someone who can smile deeply.

I think a smile comes from the soul. And I also love its transitive kind of nature—that if you’re in the presence of someone who has a happiness and a laughter about them, it’ll affect you and it’ll call that out in you as well.

Your body relaxes completely when you’re having fun. I think one of the things that religion has often prevented us from doing is having really great fun. To be here, in a way—despite the sadness and difficulty and awkwardness of individual identity—is to be permanently invited to the festival of great laughter."

I think John O’Donohue captures it perfectly

In the face of the difficulties that we all face it is laughter and the sharing of it that helps us to stay open hearted and fully engaged. Laughter can hold us together when all around us can appear to be falling apart and it can also connect us once again when we are tempted to retreat back into ourselves. Laughter is the greatest medicine and maybe it truly is the closest thing to the grace of God.

None of us knows what the coming seasons will bring. There will be tears, but not always of sorrow, there will be joy and laughter too, if we can but stay open hearted and refuse to retreat back into those shells of self-protection. Let’s not be afraid of our tears, for there are tears of laughter too. Let’s enjoy every season for none of us know how many seasons we have left; let’s not forget, in the words of Conrad Hyers "The first and last word belong to God and therefore not to death but life, not to sorrow but joy, not to weeping but laughter. For surely it is God who has the last laugh."

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

There is always time to laugh and cry, you don’t have to wipe the tears from your eye

Last Tuesday was All Souls Day, a time to remember those that we have loved and lost. Those souls who touched our lives in so many ways. It is always a difficult day for me personally. Not least because it was on the 2nd of November 2006 that I experienced what has been the most significant loss of my life. A soul that reawakened a dying love in me, died that day. I re-felt that feeling whilst experiencing shared silence with friends in meditation as the sun rose that morning. I spent the day working on the service, that this devotion has come from, but also in conversation with many dear friends new and old. I also had a long overdue phone conversation with my mum. She has been quite worried of late as her beloved auntie Sheila is in Pinderfields hospital in a Covid ward on a ventilator. She also has all the other worries that mothers carry with them, not least of all for me one of her sons. It was good to talk, to love, to care. That afternoon, just when I needed it the most, I received a message from a dear old friend. She apologised for the lateness, but sent a rather lovely couple of pictures of myself with her and another dear, dear friend, from so long ago. I had requested a few weeks ago when I turned 50 if friends would send pictures and memories. It came at just the perfect moment as I recalled and re-lived so many memories. It brought tears to my eye. Tears of joy and tears of sadness. It brought a broad beaming smile to my face and no small amount of laughter. It reminded of what it means to truly live life as it actually is. You must accept all the blessings and curses of choosing life, to paraphrase good old Moses. Earlier that day I had met another friend for coffee. We had been trying to meet for weeks, but things kept on getting in the way. We shared about grief and about the joy of living. He is coming up to the first anniversary of the loss of his nephew. He will be spending a few days with his brother, whose son died last year. I shared the significance of the day with him. It was a rich and deep conversation. My life is filled with such things. It was a time of sorrow and yet there was a strange joy in the connection and no small amount of laughter. Of course we were interrupted several times by people we know, which again brought spontaneous laughter.



As I returned to my office those old familiar words from Ecclesiastes, were singing in my heart, as they were throughout Tuesday. They always touch that place deep in the soul of me, the place of joy and sorrow too. Words that are fitting for all seasons, but particularly autumn and especially November, this season of Remembrance. Ecclesiastes speaks, that truth of truths,that whatever we are feeling or experiencing at the moment is always fleeting and that “this too shall pass”; that nothing is permanent in life, it is forever changing and however you feel about a situation right now, you will feel differently soon. This is both good and bad news, well actually it is just reality. The key is to not deny the experience to know the joy and blessing as it truly is. For there is a time and place for everything under the sun. Do not deny this, for in so doing you are denying your full humanity.

The service that night was beautiful, it touched those parts that needed to be touched. It was wonderful to be together with others for this. November is the season of remembrance in so many ways. At this time, we remember those who have touched our lives in deep and special ways. Yes, we remember those who are no longer with us, but it is also important to remember those who are still with us too. Those two pictures of dear old friends helped me to remember this too. Actually, over the last few months I have had the gift of reconnecting with so many dear friends. It has been very special as my life has been blessed again by tears of pain, but laughter too.

In this season of remembrance tears come for so many reasons. Some are very obvious to us, tears of grief. That said they come for many other reasons too. This brings to mind the following rather wonderful piece on “Tears” by Frederick Buechner

“Tears” by Frederick Buechner

They say that whenever the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went to the beach, he would pile up a mound of sand and sit on it gazing out at the ocean with tears running down his cheeks. One wonders what there was about it that moved him so.

The beauty and the power of it? The inexpressible mystery of it? The futility of all those waves endlessly flowing in and ebbing out again? The sense that it was out of the ocean that life originally came and that when life finally ends, it is the ocean that will still remain? Who knows? . . .

Maybe it was when he looked at the ocean that he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to. Maybe what made him weep was how vast and overwhelming it was and yet at the same time as near as the breath of it in his nostrils, as salty as his own tears.”

Who knows why the tears come. Does it matter? I don’t think so. They are precious sacraments though, every single one. They are far more than water leaking from our eyes. Emotional tears help to cleanse us. Their composition is different from those that result from cutting onions or from irritations in our eyes. We cry not because there is something wrong with our eyes. Tears created from emotions contain more toxins, much like sweat does. They help to cleanse the body and also contain leucine enkephalin, an opiate. Tears created from felt emotion not only cleanse us, but ease us too.

Brings to mind the following “Going On Together” by Yehuda Amichai

"Above the hotel gate, I saw a sign:
'International Conference on Inflammation of the Eye'
for those who have cried too much or not cried enough.
All of them with name tags on their lapels
like temporary nameplates in a cemetery or markers
in a botanical garden.
They approach one another as if sniffing, as if checking,
Who are you where are you from and when
was the last time you cried?
The subject of the morning session is 'Sobbing:
The end of Crying or the Way It Begins.' Sobbing
as soul-stuttering and griefstones. Sobbing
as a valve or a loop that links cry to cry,
a loop that unravels easily, like a hair ribbon,
and the crying — hair that fans out in profusion, glorious.
Or a loop that pulls into an impossible knot —
sobbing like an oath, a testimony, a cure.
Back in their cubicles, the women translators are busy
translating fate to fate, cry to cry. At night they come home,
scrub the words from their lips, and with sobs of happiness
they start loving, their eyes aflame with joy."

An interesting take on tears on sobbing.

In ancient times tears were considered sacred. So much so that they were stored in bottle like containers called “lachrymatories”. They are mentioned in the 56th Psalm of David verse 8, who prays to God 'Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?'. In ancient Rome mourners filled small tear bottles or cups with tears and placed them in tombs as a symbol of respect for the departed. The volume of tears attested to the status of the deceased individual. Mourners were recruited and paid for the specific purpose of producing and collecting tears for these containers. You can find Lachrymatories in museums thoughout the world. They reappeared during the nineteenth century, when many of our modern customs around grief and mourning were established. Tear bottles were made with special openings to collect the tears and when they evaporated it was thought that the appropriate period of mourning was over. It would seem that the practice has re-emerged in recent years. You can have your own made by a specialised craftsperson and or have your tears enclosed in a glass necklace.

I am not sure what I think of all this. I wouldn’t want to store and enclose something as sacred as a tear, shed from the deepest aspect of our humanity. It’s a bit like the butterfly collector who wants to pin the butterfly down. A butterfly is a butterfly when it lives for a short time in a garden and flies. Just as a tear is precious as it is a spontaneous reaction to a lived emotion. Once we store these things we kill them of real meaning. You cannot freeze a moment, its beauty is in the lived experience. That said mementos, like photographs, can help us reconnect to an experience shared with a loved one, so they do have an important value. Like I say I am not entirely sure how I feel about such things as tear cups and their like. What about your good selves?”

Tears of course are not always about sadness. There are tears of joy too. There are other expressions of emotion as well. One being laughter. Now one thing we do not do is store is our laughter. Well I suppose there is canned laughter, but is there anything more artificial and soulless? Nor am I great believer in fake laughter. People do things like Zen laughter groups. Laughter for me should always be spontaneous, otherwise it just isn’t real; laughter for me is just as sacred as any tear. We recognise one another often through our laughter. I have shared much laughter recently, with some dear old friends. Such sacred moments.

Laughter is so important. I recently discovered the following amusing poem “Bad news about my vocation” by Koertge

Bad News About My Vocation

by Ron Koertge

I remember how the upper crust in my hometown
pronounced it—care-a-mel. Which is correct, I guess,
but to everybody else it was carmel.

Which led to the misconception about the order
of Carmelites.

I imagined they served God by heating sugar
to about 170 C, then adding milk and butter
and vanilla essence while they listened
to the radio.

I thought I could do that. I could wear the white
shirt and pants. I knew I couldn’t be good
but I might be a good candy maker.

So imagine my chagrin when I learned about
the vows of poverty and toil enjoined
by these particular friars.

I also crossed off my list the Marshmellowites
and the Applepieites, two other orders I
was thinking of joining.

I love this poem. For some folks poetry is a serious business, perhaps it is. It can also be seriously funny. Life is far too serious a business to be taken too seriously. It should be the same with poetry, or at least this ought to be the lot of the poet.

Some people find me amusing, I am please about that. I was asked to conduct a funeral for someone recently. I was asked because the deceased sister knew that I had a sense of humour and wouldn’t be poe faced. That said one thing I have never been any good at is telling jokes. In fact part of my ministerial training was to learn how to tell jokes really badly, or certainly that seems to be the impression I give. The Baptists students. got “stand up” comedy training, we got the opposite it seems. So please stop me, stop me, stop me. Stop if you think you’ve heard this one before. Please stop me…

A Vicar, a priest and a Unitarian minister were travelling together to an ecumenical lunch, they were trying to save petrol money. Sadly on the way, they were involved in a fatal car crash. Now while they all sadly died, there was some good news, they all made it to heaven, even the Unitarian, which surprised them all.

No that isn’t the joke.

As they were going through orientation. They were all asked, 'When you are in your casket, and friends, family, and congregants are mourning over you, what would you like to hear them say?' The Vicar said, 'I would like to hear them say that I was a wonderful husband, a fine spiritual leader, and a great family man.' The priest said, 'I would like to hear that I was a wonderful teacher and a servant of God who made a huge difference in people's lives.' The Unitarian minister replied, 'I would like to hear them say, "Look, he's moving."

I did warn you I was never a great teller of jokes. I am though blessed with a sense of humour, thank God. I promise no more jokes.

Life is not easy. It can often seem even more difficult at this time. If I was to just sit with the pain of life I would do nothing but weep. That said there is more to life than this. There is love, laughter and joy too, despite all the very real pain and suffering. I Suspect that one of the greatest paradoxes of life is that it is vitally important to learn to take ourselves seriously enough to take ourselves lightly. To realise we are not alone and that there is much love and joy to share.

“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” And the seasons turn and pass and come again. This last couple of years I feel that the line “A time to weep and a time to laugh” has taken on a deeper meaning. In recent weeks and months, as I have spent time with dear old friends and new ones too I wept more and by the same token I laughed more too. More of those barriers have come down. I know for a fact I have felt more. I suspect I am not alone in this. I Know it will make me more resilient and enable me to serve in a better and more open manner. My jokes though will not improve. So please forgive me.

I’m going to end this devotion with “A Recipe for Resilience” by Margaret Weis



“A Recipe for Resilience” by Margaret Weis



This recipe has been tweaked over time, so adjust as necessary.

Sometimes it yields more servings than anticipated.
Sometimes it needs a bit more of this ingredient or that.
It comes from generations who have gone before me, and I've added my own flavor along the way.

A Recipe for Resilience

One part courage
Two parts tears of failure and doubt
One part deep listening
One part each of both silence and laughter
A dash of trust
A pinch of wonder
A heaping scoop of naps and snacks

In a separate bowl, mix together family, friends, and those who challenge you to be your best self, those with whom you disagree.

Add slowly to the larger pot, add a bay leaf for … well, whatever it is bay leaves do, and let simmer for as long as you need (which is often longer than you realize or anticipate).

Keep the heat at an even temperature – hot enough to cook throughout, but not so hot it burns the bottom.

Can be served at room temperature, warm, or even cold if necessary.
Serve alongside your favorite soft blanket, dog, cat, or other soft item.

Make often,
Share with others,
Hold onto the leftovers – you’ll need them after a long day that challenges your soul.

Please find below a video devotion

based on the material in this "Blogspot"

The Power of Tears

“Tears” by Frederick Buechner

"They say that whenever the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went to the beach, he would pile up a mound of sand and sit on it gazing out at the ocean with tears running down his cheeks. One wonders what there was about it that moved him so.

The beauty and the power of it? The inexpressible mystery of it? The futility of all those waves endlessly flowing in and ebbing out again? The sense that it was out of the ocean that life originally came and that when life finally ends, it is the ocean that will still remain? Who knows? . . .

Maybe it was when he looked at the ocean that he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to. Maybe what made him weep was how vast and overwhelming it was and yet at the same time as near as the breath of it in his nostrils, as salty as his own tears."


The old saying goes “Early to bed, early to rise, makes all men healthy, wealthy and wise.” Well over the last few months I have become an early riser. I certainly feel healthier for this. I’m not sure I am any wealthier, well certainly not in the material sense, although my life does indeed feel much richer. Am I any wiser? Well I think that others will have to be the judge of that.

I do though rise very early in the morning these days, usually between 5 and 6am. I have to do so in order to exercise before beginning my usual day. Now each day I go through a simple exercise routine before going out for my daily walk. Except on Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and Sunday’s. On Tuesday’s and Thursday’s I attend an early morning meditation after exercising and will go for my walk later in the day and on Sunday’s I get ready for leading worship and will again usually go walking later in the day.

While I am exercising I usually listen to the radio. The stations I listen to are often varied, from Talk Sport to Radio 4. It’s strange but I do not seem to want to listen to music while going through my exercise regime. These days I to listen to music while driving and not really while doing anything else.

…I digress…

Well one Sunday, a little while ago, I turned on the Radio at about 6am and began to exercise. The program I listened to was titled “Something Understood”, it was mesmerising and caught me right in the heart of me and I have listened to this program about every other week since. Each week they explore a subject through poetry, prose, music and personal anecdotal reflection. A few weeks ago I listened to a beautifully moving piece titled “I sat down and wept” by Samira Ahmed. It was a reflection on the ambiguous power of tears and it awakened by homiletic consciousness on that cold late winter morning. The program looked specifically at our attitudes to people who weep and weeping in general. It was fascinating.

While listening there was one poem, by the contemporary British poet Andrew McMillan, that caught me deep in the heart of me. It was titled “The Men are Weeping in the Gym”

It struck me powerfully as I considered myself exercising at this ungodly hour.

Below is a recording of Andrew sharing the poem and a written version...

“The men are weeping in the gym” by Andrew McMillan

The men are weeping in the gym
Using the hand dryer to cover their sobs
Their hearts have grown too big for their chests
Their chests have grown too big for their shirts
They are dressed like kids who have forgotten their games kits
They are crying in the toilets
And because they have built themselves as statues
This must mean that God has entered them
They are ringing their faces like sweat towels in the sink
Their veins are about to burst their banks
They are flooding out of themselves onto the tiles
They have turned water into protein shakes
They have got too close to the mirrors
They have got too close to the glass
And now they are laying in the broken pools of own their faces
The lines of them at the decline press
The bicep curl
Waiting, staring straight ahead
Swearing that the wetness on their cheeks is perspiration
That the words they mutter as they lift are meaningless
That they feel nothing when the muscle tears itself from itself
That they don’t hear the thousands of tiny fracturing’s needed to build something stronger.

The men are weeping in the gym

Andrew McMillan is a gay man from the north of England and the poem is partly inspired by his fascination with heterosexual masculinity and the way that men attempt to impress other men. I get the impression that he sees a sadness in it all.

As I listened it made me pause and think as I exercised before getting ready to lead worship. He captured one of the reasons why I have had a phobia about gyms, something I am beginning to overcome. I exercise to be as healthy as I can be. I am certainly not attempting to impress anyone. Thankfully I rarely look to others for approval.

McMillan suggests that many modern young men feel they no longer have a real emotional outlet. That actually the concept of the modern man is not as real as some suggest and that young men are struggling for identity and going more deeply into themselves and into what he calls masculine activity, that they feel fragile, scared and weak. He suggests that many young men have reacted against the idea of the modern man and that they feel under a new pressure to be something that they cannot be, to behave in a way they should behave, to look a way they should look. Modern man can cry, but do they really know who they are? Are they really free?

Yes modern men can cry publicly, can show tears. Think of Obama who cried following another tragic school shooting, British politicians too as well as many celebrities can express tears publicly. Something that perhaps they couldn’t have done in the past and yet there is a deeper sense of repression in there. It is suggested that when men cry it is actually controlled, where as in women that this is viewed as losing control and a sign of weakness. So there is still a sense of needing to be strong and in control involved when showing emotion publicly.

There is something deeply sad in all of this…I suspect that we men are missing out of something deeply sacred…There is something deeply sacred in tears…

This got me thinking about how and where we cry. In recent times I have heard several people say that they cannot cry alone; that they need other people to be there so that they can feel safe enough to cry. I suspect that this has something to do with the fear of being out of control and being unable to get back to what they perceive as normality. I may well be wrong, but I don’t think so. If you cry in public you will of course be heard and there will usually be someone or even several people who will respond and help you to put things back together again. Sometimes though I think it best just to let someone fall apart and cry. To not put them back together again, just to be with them and to let them let it go.

One thing I have noticed about myself is that I rarely cry in public, not in an utterly out of control way. I think the last time I did so in an utterly uncontrolled way was when I carried Ethan’s coffin out of the church as his funeral. I broke completely in that moment. Nothing could have held that flood back. That said even then I had to maintain some control, even if it was just of my arms and legs.

I do shed tears often, sometimes while leading worship. I don’t fear it. I know these tears are sacred and it is my soul responding to something greater than myself…

...But do I ever lose complete control?

Well I do at times fight back my tears. Not as much as I used to, but I do. I remember going to see my granddad just days before he died at Kirkwood Hospice. As I saw him there asleep I had to fight back the tears as I began to speak to him and he awoke. I somehow managed to get myself back together and spend a little time with him in those last days. I kind of knew somewhere deep within me that if my granddad saw me crying it would hurt him and that was the last thing I wanted to do in that moment. As I drove home all I could do was weep, but there was no one else there while I did so. It was similar with “our Allen” and other friends and loved ones. It has been the same with loving members of the congregation and friends too. I shed tears, but I don’t seem to lose control utterly. I allow the tears to sooth both myself and others but I rarely lose complete control.

…Yes I am open to shedding tears, but I do not weep uncontrollably, well at least not publicly…

And yet I know that there is a strength in tears. We weep with gratitude over all the amazing gifts that life offers to us. We weep communally when we share moments of great joy with others. These tears enable us to connect to our deepest feelings. They help us express our grief at endings and the loss of those who are precious to us.

As Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat remind us

“Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He also wept over the city of Jerusalem and in our time, we weep over Jerusalem and Baghdad and Kabul and the refugee cities in Palestine and the Sudan and elsewhere. A Yiddish proverb says, "What soap is for the baby, tears are for the soul."

The early Christian desert fathers and mothers had the highest regard for what they called "the gift of tears." According to Alan Jones, Dean Emeritus of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, these drops "are like the breaking of the waters of the womb before the birth of a child." That's a wonderful way to describe the connection between pain and joy!”

Ancient Greek, Roman and Hebrew cultures recognised the sacredness of tears. During their funeral rites they would cry into lacrimatories or tear cups. These small veils, filled with tears and sealed would often be buried with the deceased. In one sense these buried the griever’s feelings but they were also a way of offering a tribute to the lost loved one. In this sense the tears were the final gift to the life that had been lost.

So even though I know that weeping, that crying is a deep sacrament of love, I still do not want to let go absolutely and I know I am not alone. I feel that many of us still find this difficult. I suspect in so doing we are missing out on really hitting the depths of our human experience and transcending absolutely our human created limits. You see when we weep tears our experiences stretch beyond what the mind can comprehend, for tears truly tear open our hearts. Something so many of us, myself included, are afraid of, or so it would seem.

Tears are sacraments of love. Crying is a true spiritual experience that connects us to our deeper selves, one another, all life and that power that both creates and connects all life.

May we fear no more to shed our tears.

...I will end this little "spot" with the following reflection by David O. Rankin

“A Time to Cry” by David O. Rankin

The mother waited for her child at the bus stop. The bus arrived on time, depositing the passengers on the other side of the highway.

The eight-year-old boy broke from the group and began running across the four lanes of concrete.
The blue Cadillac crushed him like a plastic doll.

In the living-room that day:
You tell her to speak to God.
You tell her to eat and sleep.
You tell her to look to the future.
You tell her to walk in cool air.
You tell her to bear the pain and sorrow.
You tell her to think of the other children.

But your face is wet with tears; and your heart is gripped with fear; and your mind is lost in darkness; and your soul plunges wildly into the desolation of the valley – where all words are symbols of absurdity.

Yes there will be another day. But today-there is nothing to do but share the tragedy. There is nothing to do but cry!

Taken from “Portraits from the Cross”

There are tears of laughter too

Last Friday I attended the funeral of Sheila Jones at the crematorium at Southern Cemetery Manchester. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the place so full. It was a deeply moving service that spoke powerfully of the woman that she was.

 I first got to know Sheila properly when I was a student minister and over the years we have had many deep and meaningful conversations, shared our personal struggles and tragedies and shared so much of our personal experiences. We also laughed many times together at the absurdities of life, both our own and that of others. Sheila was the last, of a long list of people, who have touched my life in so many ways who died last year.

Now during the service they read these beautiful words from Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 3 vv 1-8

3For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.


Words that whenever I hear them, more than when I read them, always touch that special place deep in the soul of me. They are words that are fitting for any season and any emotion and speak powerfully to me of the year that has passed and no doubt every year that I will be fortunate enough to experience in the future. Ecclesiastes speaks that truth of truths that whatever we are feeling or experiencing at the moment is always fleeting and that “this too shall pass” that nothing is permanent in life, it is forever changing and however you feel about a situation right now, you will feel differently soon. This is both good and bad news, well actually it is just reality.

Last week was the first anniversary of my granddad’s death. His was the first of so many losses last year. In a couple of weeks it will be the first anniversary of my brother, our Allen’s death. I shed my tears last week as I remembered the old lad and re-felt the pain of his loss, I also spoke with a few folk and remembered the man that he was and all that he meant to me, the gifts he had given me. My granddad had a wonderful sense of humour and could find the funniness in most situations, no matter how difficult. He was very funny, sometimes inappropriately so, but my word was he funny. Such a sharp wit, with little quips. Never told jokes, but never needed to, really funny people don’t need to tell jokes. He still had the capacity to make me laugh, just days before he died as he lay there in the hospice and all I could do was weep. He wasn’t trying to keep his spirits up, he was doing it for me and today I understand why. That is a true act of love. He was more concerned about how I felt in that situation than himself. He had accepted that his life was ending and was at peace with it.

“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” And the seasons turn and pass and come again. Last year one line “A time to weep and a time to laugh” took on a whole new and deeper meaning. Last year I wept more than I have ever done and by the same token I suspect I laughed more than I have ever done. I know for a fact I felt more than I ever done. I have never been more alive. I lived with an un-defended heart and saw the truth that this truly is the only way to live. I felt every breath, I did not turn away. I have never felt the presence of God more deeply.

Now I’ve not always been the kind of man who was easily moved to tears. I was as a boy, but not always as a man. There have been seasons of my life where there were few if any tears, those times when nothing touched me. I can hardly remember those seasons sadly, sometimes trying to remember those soulless days can bring tears to my eyes today.

The seasons of my life that I remember by heart and not merely head are the ones in which I have shed tears. Whether they were tears of joy; tears of sorrow; tears of awe; tears of pain; tears of frustration; tears of relief; tears of laughter. These are the thick seasons when the most profound experiences of life have occurred and deeper understanding has usually followed. During these moments I have learnt what it means to be alive. These moments have shaped my soul and built my character.

I wonder what this season will bring? Let’s not wish it away.

When I was a younger man one thing that always disturbed me about funerals was how much laughter I would hear at them. At that time in my life it was something I didn’t really understand. In those days all I could feel was the sadness. Now while I may not fully understand it today, I do experience it. I understand that just like tears laughter is a communal experience, just as we bind together in our tears and suffering we are also bound together in our joy and laughter. When people laugh together there is nothing more beautiful, it can be infectious too.

Now I’m not talking about the kind of laughter and humour that is simply mocking, especially of those weaker in society, I’m not sure this is humour at all. It certainly isn’t inspired by joyousness, more cynicism, which no one is immune from,

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Spiritual freedom brings with it the ability to laugh and not to take yourself too seriously, but it’s not about picking at other people’s perceived faults and inadequacies. This does not bring people together it just aids a sense of superiority at the expense of another. There is nothing liberating or freeing in this.

Now religion and spirituality are not often arenas where humour is obviously found and yet I have come to know that the more spiritually liberated I have become, and the more religious in its truest sense I have become, the more I have discovered my own funny bones. When I saw life as a tragedy I never felt more alone and yet when I began to see life more as kind of divine comedy with tragic elements I began to feel a part of life once more.

The ancient Greeks understood this. From their religious rituals grew two forms of theatre. One was tragedy and the other was comedy, the rituals of Dionysius incorporated both elements. The tragedies motto was “woe is me”, they portrayed situations in which the people, due to their natures, were fated to focus on their own suffering. Whereas the comedies motto was “Get over yourself”, they too expressed situations that included suffering but in these tales the people were enabled to discover ways out of these situations.

Comedy is there in the Abrahamic faiths too. There is a rich tradition of humour in Judaism, but humour is also a part of both Christian and Islamic traditions. Mulla Nasrudin is the archetype of the holy fool. found in virtually every tradition. The early Christian Desert Father’s found humour within their spirituality too. You will also find humour in the parables and stories from the eastern traditions as well. You can find many of these tales in "Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart: Parables of the Spiritual Path from round the Word" edited by Christina Fieldman and Jack Kornfield It saddens me that in the modern age so much of this seems to have got lost as the poe faced and more puritanical factions have become the dominant elements in religion. And yet as Karl Barth has claimed “laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.” "

“laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.”

Why is this you might well ask? Well because laughter brings us together, it takes us beyond the confines of our narrow selves. It takes us beyond the confines of our own thinking minds, it helps not to take ourselves too seriously and opens our hearts beyond the confines of our own egos, there is a reason that it is said to be the best medicine. As J.B. Priestly claimed “There is in happiness an element of self-forgetfulness. You lose yourself in something outside yourself when you are happy; just as when you are desperately miserable you are intensely conscious of yourself, you are a solid little lump of ego weighing a ton.”

There is a place for silliness, especially in the most difficult of times. Last week as I was leaving what they called the “get together” after Sheila’s funeral I spoke to one of my favourite and naturally funny people Peter Sampson, I acted the goat and then for some reason apologised for being silly. Peter just smiled and laughed and then rather lovingly said you weren’t being silly, you were being you. I walked away smiling and chuckling to myself. It was one of those lovely moments of connection that lifted both of us up in what was a rather difficult time.

It brought to mind some rather lovely words by the Bendictine nun and author Joan Chittister, that a friend recently posted on facebook

“Humor gives a people dignity in situations that denigrate them. Laughter gives us relief from the burden of dailiness. No amount of coercion can break an unbreakable spirit, humor teaches us.. . . Humor cuts oppressors down to size, takes their sting away, renders them powerless to destroy us. Don't give in to what diminishes you. Learn to laugh at it and reduce its power over you.”

Now these words led me to the following by the great pre-war American theologian Harry Emerson Fosdick, he wrote “Happiness at its deepest and best is not the portion of a cushioned life which never struggled,...bore hardships, or adventured in sacrifice for costly aims. A heart of joy is never found in luxuriously coddled lives, but in men and women who achieve and dare, who have tried their powers against antagonisms, who have met even sickness and bereavement and have tempered their souls in fire…”

An undefended heart is one that both gives and receives laughter.

As John O’Donohue claimed "I think that laughter is one of the really vital dimensions of the divine presence that has been totally neglected.

I often feel when the Divine One beholds us obsessed in our intricate maze of anxiety and planning and intentionality, that She can’t stop laughing.

It’s great for people, actually, to laugh, too. I love a sense of humour in a person. It’s one of my favorite things, because I think when somebody laughs, they break out of every system that they’re in.

There’s something really subversive in laughter and in the smile on the human face. It’s lovely and infectious to be in the company of someone who can smile deeply.

I think a smile comes from the soul. And I also love its transitive kind of nature—that if you’re in the presence of someone who has a happiness and a laughter about them, it’ll affect you and it’ll call that out in you as well.

Your body relaxes completely when you’re having fun. I think one of the things that religion has often prevented us from doing is having really great fun. To be here, in a way—despite the sadness and difficulty and awkwardness of individual identity—is to be permanently invited to the festival of great laughter."

In the face of the difficulties that we all face it is laughter and the sharing of it that helps us to stay open hearted and fully engaged. Laughter can hold us together when all around us can appear to be falling apart and it can also connect us once again when we are tempted to retreat back into ourselves. Laughter is the greatest medicine and maybe it truly is the closest thing to the grace of God.

None of us knows what this season will bring. There will be tears, but not always of sorrow, there will be joy and laughter too, if we can but stay open hearted and refuse to retreat back into those shells of self-protection. Let’s not be afraid of our tears, for there are tears of laughter too. Let’s enjoy this season for none of us know how many seasons we have left; let’s not forget, in the words of Conrad Hyers "The first and last word belong to God and therefore not to death but life, not to sorrow but joy, not to weeping but laughter. For surely it is God who has the last laugh."

Tears: The Most Sacred of Waters

In recent blogspots I have explored suffering and despair and how to find meaning in difficult times; ways to the engage with the kind of deep sustenance that can sustain us when life seems difficult. In this final piece for Novemeber I am continuing with this theme by discussing a substance that occurs naturally within everyone. It will explore that most sacred of waters; it will be exploring tears. I suspect that the tear may just about be the ultimate of human sacraments. Tears mark many of the most sacred moments of our lives; tears connect us to these moments in ways that are way beyond mere words.

Tears rolled down my cheeks on several occasions last weekend. Most of them were not tears of sadness; no they were tears of gratitude, joy and connection. I have shed tears of sadness in recent weeks, but not last weekend.

Last Sunday I was deeply touched by the anniversary service I attended at Oldham Unitarian Chapel and One World Centre. They were celebrating 200 years of Unitarian witness in the town. The first Unitarians began gathering there, officially at least, for the first time in an upstairs room just a few months after the Trinity Act was passed in 1813. This act allowed Unitarians to worship free from persecution for the first time. The history of Oldham Unitarians has been one of struggle. There have been times when they have thrived, but in the main they have struggled. This has been particularly true in recent years. This is why it was such a joy to be there last Sunday and to see them harvesting some of the fruits of their labour. Over the weekend their new One World Cafe was opened and they also unveiled the most beautiful new stained glass window. The dedication of the new window was led by Marion Nuttall ,one of the stalwarts of the congregation. As she spoke tears began to roll down my face. As they did I looked around the chapel and noticed the same thing occurring in the eyes of others that were present there tpp. These were tears of love and understanding, tears of recognition for Marion and her steadfast dedication to the chapel, the people of Oldham and free religion. It was a real privilege to be a witness to this.

I also experienced some wonderful tears of gratitude as I tried to settle down to sleep last Saturday night. I was quite high on life at the time. I’d been to a wonderful New Model Army gig that night and had been moved deeply by the whole experience. I had shared the night with some new friends and yet I felt that I had experienced the whole event with friends I had known from being a teenager. I even bumped into an old mate I’d not seen since the later 1990’s. As soon as we saw one another we just hugged, what more was there to do. As I lay in bed that night I tried to come down from the high of the evening and just could not. I tried to clear my head and connect to my breathing, but it just did not work. So I decided to just lie and re-feel the memories not just of that night but of many nights over many years. I remembered old friends and passions and as I did tears began to form in my eyes. They were not tears of sadness; they were tears of gratitude, connection and most of all love. After a while a broad smile spread across my face and I drifted into a deep dreamless sleep.

There is something deeply sacred in tears. I’m not really talking about crying here by the way. I think that crying is something else, something that demands attention from others and something we often feel we need to do something about. Crying, sobbing especially in children is something which makes most people feel deeply uncomfortable.

In recent times I have heard several people say that they cannot cry alone; that they need other people to be there so that they can feel safe enough to cry. I suspect that this has something to do with the fear of being out of control and being unable to get back to what they perceive as normality. I may well be wrong, but I don’t think so. If you cry in public you will of course be heard and there will usually be someone or even several people who will respond and help you to put things back together again.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit recently. I’m not sure I cry in public, or not very often anyway. I do shed tears though. I do so a lot actually, sometimes while leading worship. I don’t fear it. I know these tears are sacred and it is my soul responding to something greater than myself.

Tears though don’t only come in response to gratitude and happy moments of connection. They are also a response to deeply felt suffering. It will not surprise you to hear that Forrest Church had something rather beautiful to say on this subject, He wrote that...

"...the ancient Hebrews honoured suffering, viewing it as a sign of a deeply felt experience, a symbol of their passion. I encountered an intimate expression of this on a recent visit to Israel.

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem contains a collection of tiny ceramic cups. These were sacramental vessels. People cried into them.

Your mother has just died. Someone you love has cancer. Your spouse has left you. You are struggling at work. More likely, you have simply broken down. You burst into tears. So you pick up your tear cup, put it under your eye, and weep into it. When you are finished weeping, you cap it and put it away again. It is a way to save your tears.

Why save them? Because they are precious. It doesn’t matter why we cried, your tears are precious, for they show that you care. A full cup of tears is proof that you have felt deeply, suffered, and survived. Their value is ratified by this simple parable from Jewish lore. When his student complained that he was suffering and so deeply confused that he could no longer pray and study, Rebbe Mendl of Kotzk asked him, “What if God prefers your tears to your studying?”.

Washington Irving the author of the Gothic novel “Sleepy Hollow” claimed that “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”

Tears are sacred; they are perhaps the holiest of holy waters. I have not always seen them this way. I used to see them as a sign of weakness; that they symbolised emotion that needed to be controlled and not expressed. I remember the day that my father died, walking into the room where he lay. I went in alone, I looked at him and kissed him and then turned and walked out of the door and into my grandma’s kitchen. As I did so my auntie and grandma asked if I was ok as they did I felt the emotion come and I swallowed hard, no tears came. I did not cry at the funeral either. It took me 10 years before I was able to grieve my father’s life and death.

Thankfully I am no longer like that. One reason I spend so long preparing the funeral services I lead is because of the way they affect me. I have to go over them again and again to work through the emotion, so has to maintain professionalism on the day. Yet no matter what I do the emotion is there, there is always one or two tears. As there should be, these are sacred moments that I am attempting to hold people through.

For so much of my life I have been afraid of my emotional nature and this is one of the reasons why when I was first asked by my granddad if I would conduct his funeral, when the time came, I refused. I did so because I was afraid I would be unable to cope on the day. Since then thankfully my faith has grown. Only a couple of weeks ago it came to me that this is something I must do. Yes tears will be shed, but it is something I must do. It is the right thing to do. Today I try not to shy away from the sacredness of life.

I have for many years been fascinated by two very different images of overflowing cups. One is the Zen Buddhist tale about an overflowing tea cup and the other the verse from the 23rd Psalm “my cup runneth over”. The Zen tale depicts the importance of an empty mind. The story teaches that we need what Buddhist describe as “Beginners Mind” in order to truly learn what is required to find peace. It teaches that our problem is that our minds are overflowing with so much stuff that we have no room for anything new. There is a real deep truth here. A clear mind is a priceless commodity. The question this raises for me though is how do we create the clear mind?

For a long time I believed that the way to achieve this was to learn to control my thoughts and not allow them to attach to things. Well this never really worked for me and today I can clearly see why. You see back then I wasn’t really trying to control my mind at all, more my emotions. No doubt this is why it never worked for me. I have in recent days learnt a better way. I have found that by filling the cup of love to the point that it ‘runneth over’ my mind has become clear. The cup that is of course being filled is my heart, nay my soul. I have discovered by connecting fully to all that is, all that has been and all that is yet to be my spirit has become healthy and as a result my mind has pretty much emptied. Hard to believe really because for many years my mind never stopped swirling, this is why I suffered insomnia for so long. When I stopped and lay my head on my pillow my head would not slow down it would in fact speed up and there was nothing I could do about it. I thank God this is no longer the case; I thank God that I have discovered by filling my heart, my soul, that my head becomes empty.

This of course leads to another question. How do we fill the cup to overflowing? Well maybe there's a lesson to be learnt from those ancient Hebrews and their tiny ceramic cups. Maybe the answer is to find a way to store those tears to let them build up so that they overflow out of ourselves and into our lives. Now I’m not suggesting you buy cups yourselves, please don’t take me literally here. What I mean is that we can do so by increasing our sensitivity to life and we do this by simply connecting to the world in which we live, moment by moment, breath by breath. I’m not just talking about saving the tears of about sorrow here either, I’m talking as much about joy as anything else. Tears are a sign of a truly felt experience and I believe that to truly live meaningful lives we have to experience everything and to carry that experience out into our world.

November is the month of change and reflection and this year this has been quite an intense experience for me. Now it is time to move forward into the winter, into December, into Advent. It is time to move forward into the new light that can come if we fill our hearts and souls to over flowing and attempt to bring into our world glad tidings of comfort and joy. Our world needs it and we need it too. 

So I say fill those cups to overflowing and spread this abundant love into our world. Drink from one another’s cups and from the cup of the eternal for that is one cup that is forever overflowing.