Tears are prayers that reveal our truth before the Beloved...God honors tears...receives and tenderly
holds tears as if they are precious, explosive testimony that must be preserved for some future day.
Perhaps this vigilant, seeing, and tear-collecting God weeps with the weeping world.
~from LAMENTATIONS AND THE TEARS OF THE WORLD by Kathleen M. O'Connor
Two hundred years ago Issa heard the morning birds
singing sutras to this suffering world.
I heard them too, this morning, which must mean,
since we will always have a suffering world,
we must also always have a song.
~ David Budbill, "What Issa Heard" in MOMENT TO MOMENT