‘Tears Are a Gift’ – The Alchemy Blog with Ranchor Prime

By Ranchor Prime 28/07/2011

Today in the Meditation Circle at Alchemy I was reminded of words from the 1998 film Hideous Kinky based on a novel by Esther Freud. Kate Winslett plays a troubled hippy mother escaping 1960s London with her young children. Her spiritual quest brings her to the feet of a Sufi master in Morocco.

‘Why have you come?’ he asks. When confronted by this long awaited chance to learn from the great teacher, speech fails her. Instead she can only weep. The master’s face softens.

‘My child,’ he says, ‘Tears are a gift from God. Tears are for memory, for without them how could we remember ourselves?’
Having heard this she departs and returns with her children to London.

 

I remembered her today when I watched tears glisten in a friend’s eyes. I don’t know the immediate cause, but from my own experience I know that tears come at the moment of acceptance. Whenever I have formed a strong attachment in life, sooner or later comes the time when I must let go.

 

The day I delivered my daughter to university was to be a happy day celebrating her coming of age. The two of us drove two hundred miles, our car full of CDs, clothes, bedding, books and a teddy bear. I helped carry her worldly belongings into her new home, then we went for a last meal. At dusk we returned to her student hall and sat together on her bed. She was excited and I was happy for her. I got up to leave. Suddenly a lump was in my throat. We walked to the front door. As I turned to hug her I was overcome by wave of emotion. Hot tears burst forth and I hid my face.

 

I managed to say goodbye and stumble to the car. I got in and just drove. A few miles down the road I pulled in, turned off the engine and bawled my eyes out. Eighteen years of fatherhood flashed past me. I felt I had lost a daughter I barely knew. Until that moment I hadn’t known for sure that I loved her.

 

In the moment of parting we see who we are. Love drives me into the world. In giving I receive and so I grow. Then comes the wound of separation. Sometimes it seems almost more than a person can bear. Each time it occurs I know myself more, I feel more the love of the divine within and around me. The stronger my outward attachment the deeper the wound, drawing me ever further on my journey outward into the world and inward to my very depths.

 

The moment of acceptance, when I stop resisting, when I let go and leave it to God, is my moment of tears. Tears are a gift of God. They show me myself.

Ranchor Prime teaches here at the Centre on Tuesdays from 16:30.