Frey’s research suggests that when we let social conditioning hinder our capacity to cry, we aren’t just missing out on a piece of our humanity; we may be damaging our brains in the process. It also helps explain why it became easier for me to cry regularly: It’s only a culturally imposed stoicism that prevents us all from crying more readily. The shift in brain chemistry that emotional tears produce may be the reason crying so often precedes personal and social transformation.
Rabbi Michael Adam Latz, now senior rabbi at Shir Tikvah in Minneapolis, wrote his thesis for Hebrew Union College in 2000 on the power of crying, and he offers spiritual testimony that dovetails with Frey’s scientific analysis. “What I find in my rabbinic practice,” said Latz, “is that people who do not weep do not grieve well. Folks who do not cry in hard moments have a substantially harder time dealing with their grief.”
Latz believes that the power of tears transcends our own brain chemistry — it fertilizes social transformation as well. “When we really cry, it clouds your vision until it clarifies it,” he notes. “It makes it all blurry, until you realize ‘Oh, I see this, I feel this, I know this in a different way.’” And that embodied knowing facilitates our connection to other people. “Weeping cleanses the body and soul,” he concludes, “and creates the opening for whatever comes next.”
In her essay “ Call the Wailing Women to Weep for Us,” the Rev. Wil Gafney wrote, “I don’t know what to do or what I can do to keep the police from shooting, strangling, suffocating and now, severing our spines in vehicular lynchings. I’m tired of praying.”
Instead of formal prayer, she offers wailing as an injunction that can break through cultural apathy, to create change amid a society sinfully accustomed to brutality and death. “We need to weep with rage and determination,” she wrote. “Death is in the house.”
Children weep easily, shattering our ability to pretend that no one is hurting. This naturally makes adults uncomfortable, simply because tears are destabilizing, and we shame kids into “growing” out of their tears. Given Frey’s and Latz’s work, this is emotional abuse. We should instead foster and praise weeping as a liberating spiritual act. Doing so might build a world where it wasn’t so frequently necessary.
At the 2018 March for Our Lives, the activist and Parkland, Florida, shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez took the stage and stood silently for six minutes and 20 seconds, tears streaming down her face. It was as radical and prophetic an act as any of the fiery speeches that preceded her. I found myself weeping as I watched her, along with the crowd: In that moment we were all connected.
Gonzalez’s tears didn’t change everything; years later we’re still waiting for meaningful gun legislation. But those tears opened a possibility for something new to emerge. They invited us to transcend the death we’ve made peace with. They invite us still. If we’re brave enough to embrace disciplined wailing, perhaps we can be transformed.
(The Rev. Benjamin Perry is the minister of outreach and media strategy at Middle Collegiate Church. You can follom on Twitter @FaithfullyBP. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
This article originally appeared here.
