What makes you cry?

I am on Facebook, partially to get in touch with old friends, partially to keep communication lines open with current friends in a busy life. I've looked over some of the "notes" that go around. These notes ask a long list of questions (and are annoyingly repetitive!) and appeal primarily to teenage girls. I was thinking of one question this morning that I've seen on many of these notes ... "When was the last time you cried?" The most common response to this is "meh" or "I dunno" :-).

Ummm ... in my case, about three minutes ago, as I read a story in the book "Messy Spirituality" that we are doing for small group, about a young man, uncomfortable with seniors, who ends up visiting a dying man once a month. When the man is beyond speech, his granddaughter comes to the seniors home to meet the one who her grandfather told her about ... "Jesus", who came every month just to hold his hand.

And yesterday, during the last half hour of "Titanic" ... a veritable sobfest (and I wasn't the only one, but I won't mention names!). What a tragic moment in history, and what an impressive movie. It truly gives face, though fictional, to what to me was a childhood rhyme and a set of statistics.

And Saturday, while reading the book "Shattered" ... many times I teared up, and several times I sobbed. This is an amazing book aimed at the teen market about a young, shallow, wealthy boy who ends up (by accident) helping in a soup kitchen. His journey leads him into learning about homelessness, rejection, genocide ... he is awakened from emotional sleep to the greater and more tragic world around him. So much food for thought, in particular how the book uses Joseph Stalin's quote as a springboard "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." At one point in the book, the protagonist is finally realizing the danger of statistics, and seeks to put a face to the genocide in Rwanda. (This happens to be the point where I lost it :-) ...)


I didn't used to cry as much. However, post-children, I cry. I cry for the rawness of life. I cry at victory and especially when ordinary people show moments of the heroic. I cry when I see glimpses of the Almighty in the day-to-day messiness of life, and in the ordinary lives of His motley followers. I cry when my carefully constructed walls are down. Apparently, I cry a lot ... but not always because I'm sad. Generally because I'm awed ... inspired ... sensititized to something that I've missed before ... and grateful.

Had a good cry lately? What makes YOU cry?