Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination
Language: English
Published by Princeton University Press July 2005, 2005
- Softcover
- New

Seller: Eighth Day Books, LLC, Wichita, KS, U.S.A.Eighth Day Books, LLC
AbeBooks seller since April 20, 2001
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'The question of tears.is an obscure matter and hard to analyze,' writes St. John Climacus. A passage from the Talmud offers, 'But though the gates of prayer (sha'are tefillah) are closed, the gates of weeping (sha'are dim'ahi) are not closed.' Though tears may be a form of liquid entreaty, they are not utterance. They are alternately messy, inchoate, a posture of sorrow, or an indication of despair. Tears are often associated with certain personality types and attributed to one gender more than another. But can they supersede prayer, as the Talmud suggests? This collection of essays is a panoramic view on the question of tears and the place of weeping in the religious imagination, encompassing an incredible (and sometimes esoteric) range of subjects including ritualized weeping in Japan, tears in the Mexican tradition, ritual tears in the Greek funerary traditions, the role of tears in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sufism, weeping in Jewish sources and the Warsaw ghetto, tears as transformation in South Asian Majlis poetry and as a marital rite of passage among the Oyo-Yoruba of Nigeria, the tears of Mary Magdalene and Margery Kempe, the mystery of tears in Eastern Orthodox spirituality, and a powerful (if somewhat controversial) discussion of God's weeping at Ground Zero following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Though uneven in parts, this rare collection essentially agrees with editor Kimberley Patton's assessment that 'rather than depleting the weeper and the well of human experience, tears generate the kingdom of God.'.…
Seller Inventory # 3093
- Title
- Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination
- Author
- KIMBERLEY CHRISTINE PATTON, ED.
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press July 2005
- Publication year
- 2005
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- Paper Back
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0691114447
- ISBN 13
- 9780691114446
- Seller catalogs
- Spiritual Life
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.
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Eighth Day Books, LLC
Wichita, KS, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since April 20, 2001
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