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Tears Over Tuscon
Posted by Wallace+
Yesterday morning, as I watched Speaker John Boehner on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, making remarks about the tragedy in Tuscon, I found myself thinking about the importance of tears.
Speaker Boehnor, as perhaps we all are aware, is known as someone "easily" brought to tears. And, surprise, surprise, he has taken some ribbing, mocking, etc., for it.
Well, not surprisingly, he had a hard time making it through his remarks on the House floor.
And, while I have little, if anything, in common with John Boehner politically, I found myself grateful to him at that moment.
And I was reminded of something the poet Wallace Stevens said, that sentimentality is a "failure of feeling."
The irony is that usually we think of sentimentality as an excess of feeling. Which perhaps it sometimes is.
On the other hand, I think too often we are so afraid of our feelings, especially feelings of grief and sadness, that we don't allow them to find their natural and healthy expression.
And thus we experience, in Stevens' words, a failure of feeling.
As I find myself saying to people, from time to time, when they apologize for their tears, "God gave us tears to use them."
And we need to use them.
Tags: grief
