I have a soul friend who when we first met did not like me.  He thought I was opinionated and arrogant. Not much change there then. He had one unusual trait to his character. He would go to cathedrals and churches and there he would cry but not know why.

I don’t know if he still cries when he enters beautiful church or cathedral spaces.  I suspect he still does but for very different reasons.  He has become a reverend and a reverence to what was calling his heart on that time when we each were searching for the understanding of that cathedral space within us.

It takes tremendous courage to enter the paradox that is living in the cathedral space of the heart.  It is not give the title “The Hero’s Journey” for no good reason.  In order to live in that twixt and between place you have to be prepared to give up what you think will make you happy and risk entering a place of unknowing.

You are asked to risk all for nothing.  You, as an ego, are a bargain hunter.  You, as an ego, think that you are something.  You, as a sense of separateness from Love, think that you are the one to do and have it all.  You are only reminded of this illusion when you enter the cathedral space for no reason at all.  Not a popular invitation for most people.  Except that it is the invitation from all those madmen and mad women we call mystics.  They say, like Rumi says

I used to be shy.

You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.

Now I shout for more wine.

 In sombre dignity, I used to sit

on my mat and pray.

 Now children run through

and make faces at me.

From Birdsong- 53 short poems translated by Coleman Barks

This is sometimes the best reason to cry.  It is beyond logic.  It is the heart calling you to wake up from a life devoid of purpose, passion and real prosperity.  Real prosperity is the ability to give yourself away freely.

I love poetry.  In a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye she asks, “What makes you cry?”  She is asking a key question here. This is the body’s response to either absence of fullness.  She isn’t asking you what make you sad.  She is asking what make you cry for joy.  What is it in your life that allows you to live the heart paradox that is an emptiness filled with joy?

This is the emptying of your life so that the One life can flow through you.  This is a feminine virtue.  It is the virtue of surrender and allowing.  It is the allowing of the space within you to open up to that spaceless, timeless dimension within you.

This Irish storyteller will guarantee you one thing.  It will make you cry and you won’t be crying for lack of understanding.  You will be crying because it is all too much to believe in because your feeling connection to that outpouring of creation through you is beyond belief.

Find time for those cathedral spaces within.  Allow them to be sanctified and to become your sanctuary from the trials and tribulations of the shifting sands of time.  If you find yourself crying for no reason it could be the call to become reverent rather than grasping.

Strange to say your soul friend is glad of heart to see you crying in the chapel.  The chapel here is not a reference to any formal religious affiliation.  It is a metaphor for one who has entered that paradox of unknowing, where emptiness is felt as an fullness.  What you felt was empty is what you were looking for.  You have come home to a house of reverence.  You are to be revered for the courage it takes to go and cry willingly for union with Love.

Go now and quest.  Ask a poetic question, “What makes me cry?”  Trust the process and you might arrive at a point where, like George Bailey in the film It’s a Wonderful Life you cry out “I want to live again!” Which is to say, “I want to Love again.”

Would that make YOU cry?

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