The sight of the Atlantic ocean can do it sometimes: or a piece of music; or a face you’ve never even seen before; a pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it; almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the second world war; a horse cantering across a meadow; the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game.
You can never be sure, but of this you can be sure: whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected
tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.
They are not only telling you something about the secret of
who you are, but more often than not, God* is speaking to you through them of
the mystery of where you’ve come from, and is summoning to where, if your soul
is to be saved, you should perhaps go to next.
- Frederick Buechner
*For the record, I don't believe in God in the sense of a man (or woman) in the sky. I think that throughout history, humans have used religion to explain the seemingly unexplainable. River gods make the water run. Sun Gods make the crops grow. And finally, a God that gives us hope of life after death to take away our fear that this life of ours has no meaning beyond the years that we live it. But I am open to God as a symbol of the concept of the mystery we yearn to understand.
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