Isaac of Nineveh

• Once you have reached the place of tears then you should understand that the mind has left the prison of this world and set its feet on the road towards the New World.
• It has begun to breathe the wonderful air which is there. It begins to shed tears.
• For now the birth-pangs of the spiritual infant grow strong, since grace, the common mother of us all, makes haste to give birth mystically to the soul, the image of God, into the light of the world to come. –Saint Isaac of Syria

I find that as the years pass, I have found tears. Much of my life, like most men, I suppose, a major tragedy was all that wet my eyes. It wasn’t that I was unwilling to cry, I simply couldn’t find tears. However, at this place in my pilgrimage to God, as I experience God, the more tears fill my eyes and grief my heart.  Till we truly grieve our lives we cannot find joy, the joy that is ours in Christ. The burdens of others, hurt my soul. Weep with those who weep, we are told;  I can hold another human being and as I feel as much as hear weeping, I weep.

I believe that I have heard another call, perhaps beyond the first. to weep with those who cannot weep. Weep for them until their tears, breaking the dam, fills the channels to their eyes.  Water intrinsically flows through channels unseen until the day the flood rises and leaks out our eyes.  On that day we become men and women for new growth always requires irrigation.   JWS.