"Where Did the Tears Come From?"
Reflection on Spiritual Life Week
By Linetta Ballew

I was sitting in Martin Chapel on the second floor of the seminary building. It was the community’s regular meeting time for worship, a gathering we have each Thursday. But today was different. As we sang and read together, I kept wondering, where are the tears coming from?

Two days earlier, the seminary community had gathered together for the first session of Spiritual Life Week. This week is a pause, a slowing down in the midst of a new semester and busy schedule, for seminary students and faculty to cultivate and reflect on their spiritual lives. Roy Hange, co-pastor of the Charlottesville Mennonite Church, guided the community throughout the week.

For several of the sessions and worship times, Roy invited us to consider the reflected light from God’s light found in Old and New Testament scriptures. This I could connect with! Amid a load of classes that focus on the background and details, I was grateful for the opportunity to focus on the bigger picture, the glimpse of God we see shimmering in the scriptures, God’s character reflected in each of the stories.

Wednesday afternoon, following a fellowship meal together, we were given an hour and a half for personal retreat time. An hour and a half?! Immediately my mind started to think of all the very useful and productive ways that I might spend the next 90 minutes - topics to research, papers to write, books to read.

Instead, I headed up on the hill behind the seminary building. This hill is one of my sacred places, a “thin space,” where heaven and earth seem a bit closer together. I found a perfect spot to retreat, not under the shade of a tree, but right out in the open autumn sunlight. As I sat down and looked out across the city to the mountains beyond, I could feel the warm sun reaching my skin, even as the cooler breeze continued to blow. Coaxed by the soft grass that wasn’t too wet from past rains or the morning dew, I lay down and looked up into the bright blue sky and beautiful clouds. I started to breathe easier.

As I got comfortable in my retreat spot, I began thinking about one of Roy’s questions that was to guide our retreat time – what new spiritual roots need to grow in my life? I started doing a self-inventory, thinking through each aspect of my life – work, school, ministry, family, church, personal - and considering what might need to happen spiritually within each of them. It was a wonderful opportunity for the self-reflection that I rarely have time, or take time, to do.

Lying there in a beautiful spot with the warmth of the sun and the cool autumn breeze, in God’s presence, talking with God about where new roots and new growth needed to happen in my life, I fell asleep, like so many disciples before me. But it may have been that best thing that could have happened – to be able to retreat and relax in God’s presence enough to fall asleep, to lie down in God’s green pastures – what a gift!

We gathered together again following our reflection time to share in small groups about our experience. I shared the image that had loomed large as I reflected during my Sabbath on the hill. It was the image of blurriness. A blurriness that made it difficult to see the reflections of God’s light or perhaps for the reflections to be made at all. The question that had remained with me was - where is the blurriness? Was it a film on the mirror of my life or was it more like a cloud of smoke or fog between me and the mirror that was reflecting clearly? Was I causing the blurriness, something inside me? Or was there something around me making it difficult to see? It was with this image and these questions that I headed home for the evening.

Thursday morning. I arrived at the morning chapel service and final worship time for Spiritual Life Week rushed and harried. I grabbed a hymnal and supplement, a worship order, and quickly found a seat near the back of the chapel. There wasn’t a tear in my eye.

But something changed as we moved into the sung communion service. I think it started with the litany of confession time. The words were so pointed, so direct, so true as I considered the life I had examined the afternoon before on the seminary hill. That image of blurriness wasn’t just a cloud of fog or smoke from my busy life, something was wrong, something was smeared on the mirror and making it hard to see, something was wrong inside me! What was it? The tears began to wet my eyes and journey down my cheeks.

Moments later I knew. As the gathered community participated in a ritual of remembrance, naming those who had passed away and gone before us, the tears began to get bigger and flowed faster, and I understood. I realized what new spiritual roots needed to grow. I was grieving. Grieving for a grandmother who died years earlier – a death I only seemed to get in touch with as I had journeyed through the death of my husband’s grandmother in February. Grieving the “death” of a good friend, almost exactly a year before, who had needed to move away very suddenly. Grieving staffing changes at the camp where I work full-time, leaving gapping holes of friendship and support, and uncertainty about who to trust and depend on. Grieving the loss of childhood, the loss of innocence and naiveté, as I have grown older and matured.

I realized that I had never really grieved these losses. I had tucked them away inside to deal with on my own, never really allowing myself to cry and mourn. The tears continued to flow as the worship service moved into a time of transformation with anointing and thanksgiving with communion. They were tears of sadness and grief, but they were also tears that were weakening the walls I had built around my heart, tears flowing inside me to cleanse and heal, tears that cleaned off the mirror’s film so that God’s reflection could shine clearly to me and perhaps, so that I could more clearly reflect God to those around me. God’s healing touch reached out to my heart and a transformation began. That’s where the tears came from.