Holy Tears

Weeping in the Religious Imagination

Kimberley Christine Patton, John Stratton Hawley, Kimberley Christine Patton, John Stratton Hawley, Kimberley Patton, John Hawley

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780691114446
  9780691114439
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691190228
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What religion does not serve as a theater of tears? Holy Tears addresses this all but universal phenomenon with passion and precision, ranging from Mycenaean Greece up through the tragedy of 9/11. Sixteen authors, including many leading voices in the study of religion, offer essays on specific topics in religious weeping while also considering broader issues such as gender, memory, physiology, and spontaneity. A comprehensive, elegantly written introduction offers a key to these topics. Given the pervasiveness of its theme, it is remarkable that this book is the first of its kind--and it is long overdue.


The essays ask such questions as: Is religious weeping primal or culturally constructed? Is it universal? Is it spontaneous? Does God ever cry? Is religious weeping altered by sexual or social roles? Is it, perhaps, at once scripted and spontaneous, private and communal? Is it, indeed, divine?


The grief occasioned by 9/11 and violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and elsewhere offers a poignant context for this fascinating and richly detailed book. Holy Tears concludes with a compelling meditation on the theology of weeping that emerged from pastoral responses to 9/11, as described in the editors' interview with Reverend Betsee Parker, who became head chaplain for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City and leader of the multifaith chaplaincy team at Ground Zero.


The contributors are Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Amy Bard, Herbert Basser, Santha Bhattacharji, William Chittick, Gary Ebersole, M. David Eckel, John Hawley, Gay Lynch, Jacob Olúpqnà (with Solá Ajíbádé), Betsee Parker, Kimberley Patton, Nehemia Polen, Kay Read, and Kallistos Ware.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Introduction
• The Poetics and Politics of Ritualized Weeping in Early and Medieval Japan
• Productive Tears: Weeping Speech, Water, and the Underworld in Mexica Tradition
• “Why Do Your Eyes Not Run Like a River?” Ritual Tears in Ancient and Modern Greek Funerary Traditions
• “Sealing the Book with Tears”: Divine Weeping on Mount Nebo and in the Warsaw Ghetto
• The Gopis’ Tears
• Hsüan-tsang’s Encounter with the Buddha: A Cloud of Philosophy in a Drop of Tears
• Weeping in Classical Sufism
• “No Power of Speech Remains”: Tears and Transformation in South Asian Majlis Poetry
• Ekun Ìyàwó: Bridal Tears in Marriage Rites of Passage among the Òyó-Yorùbá of Nigeria
• A Love for All Seasons: Weeping in Jewish Sources
• “Pray with Tears and Your Request Will Find a Hearing”: On the Iconology of the Magdalene’s Tears
• Tears and Screaming: Weeping in the Spirituality of Margery Kempe
• “An Obscure Matter”: The Mystery of Tears in Orthodox Spirituality
• “Howl, Weep and Moan, and Bring It Back to God”: Holy Tears in Eastern Christianity
• “Send Thou Me”: God’s Weeping and the Sanctification of Ground Zero
• Epilogue: Tikkun ha-olam
• INDEX
• CONTRIBUTORS