Crying

I am generally not very good at crying; and I am sure I’d have had fewer headaches if I were better at crying. But there are times for crying, as I am learning again on this journey…

When Elizabeth was here, on the day after India when the ship was in a state of stunned silence, a student of mine sat down to tell me about her experience of singing to autistic children in India, particularly singing a greeting song that incorporated the name of this utterly inaccessible child. My student, Chelsea, started to cry and she apologized. I told her that crying is the right response to some things and that there is no need to hide it or apologize for it. She went on to say that the child smiled upon hearing her name, then clapped and winked along with the song.

In my Women’s Studies class, we decided as a group that we would watch a very graphic film on the practice of FGM (female genital mutilation) in Africa, because it is too easy to avoid what it is by just saying the ‘FGM’ acronym. So, during the portrayal of ‘the procedure’ on a twelve year old girl, there was much gasping, tightening of legs, wincing, and I decided to cry because it is something to cry about, because when we let the feeling happen we want to respond, and wanting to respond is where our humanity lives.

And, yes, when I heard the landmine victims' orchestra playing their traditional music in the jungle heat under the great trees of their homeland, I cried there, too, for both the beauty and the horror of it.