Another one of nature's detoxifiers

It used to be I would visit beliefnet.com and end up, sometimes, angry at the ample space to voice out bigotry that was given to certain ultra-conservative and hateful Christian bloggers, whose entries had nothing to do with spirituality and everything to do with politics ... but that was years ago. Now I feel like beliefnet is getting back to being a much healthier, more balanced space for discussion of truly spiritual topics, and which allows for diverse perspectives ... therefore I recommend a visit to this website to my readers.

One recent entry that caught my attention (usually articles that link science and spirituality / health are interesting to me) was this one: 7 Reasons Crying Can Be Healthy.

This reminded me of the book Embracing the Exile, by John Fortunato, which is his witness to gay Christians and speaks of the wisdom of accepting what he called the 'cross' of being gay in a homophobic society. For gay persons who were not raised as Christians, this book may not speak to them, but I was very young and dealing with my own coming out issues when I read it, and it was a huge emotional release. It was painful, but it was good for me, it helped me to find compassion even for my enemies, and it helped me to observe the humanity that I shared with millions of other gay and lesbian Christians-in-exile.

It also reminded me of the wisdom of Lord Buddha, whose first of the four noble truths is that we should face the reality of suffering head on, with courage: not denying its existance, but accepting it and embracing it. Crying may seem like an act of cowardice, but it's really a very courageous act.

We should accept things just as they are, here and now. That way, we do not suffer as much. This does not mean that we should not perform the right action, to change that which we should change, it simply means that we should be honest and begin where we are. When we cry, ironically, we admit a level of defeat but we also become stronger.