I Am Glad The Tears Still Flow

For the second Sunday evening in succession I felt the tears roll down my cheeks. I was surprised to find myself so emotionally affected by a television program. Both times I had been watching 60 Minutes. The first time the copious tears rolled was as I watched the images of children injured in Iraq and the efforts of one American woman to get them new legs, to correct terrible facial scars, to bring healing to body and soul. Those kids, damaged and repaired, touched me at the heart of who I am.

The second set of visuals was entirely different. They were of older men and women, some with scraggly dirty beards; others with clean clothes and eyes that betrayed bewilderment and disorientation, aloneness. These persons, too, had been in Iraq and in Afghanistan. They were adults, veterans from the US military. The other thing they all had in common: they were homeless, living on the streets of America. I became deeply aware that I as a citizen had asked them to go to war for me and now I, as a citizen was playing a role in the homelessness, dispair, inadequate physical and mental health resources. And I wept.

It reminded me of years ago. I was at a Lutheran School Principals Conference in New York. Tough times for principals and some had had to let staff go. One principal recounted how he had let an ineffective teacher go. “It was rough”, he said. “She really needed that job but the kids were not learning”. Then he added words I have never forgotten “I am glad it still hurts”

So when I find myself crying because a fellow human being is hurt, or sick, or disfigured or homeless or lost, my heart aches a lot. In the midst of the flowing tears I hear a tiny voice whispering, “I am glad the tears still flow”; for if those tears ever stop then I have stopped being fully human.