Daily Nourishment for March 11, 2024: On Tears with Heather Christle and Catherine Ricketts
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 10-15 minutes
"The first thing you ever did was cry." -- Heather Christle, The Crying Book
Pause.
Set a timer for two minutes and meditate on Weeping Man by Leonard Baskin.
Prompt.
In the Christian year, it is the season of Lent--a season of lament and reflection. This week, we will meditate on tears. It’s difficult to write about tears without slipping into sentimentality, so our prompts will give us ideas for writing about tears with fresh language, while inviting us to reflect on the things that grieve us and provoke this fundamental human response.
Heather Christle writes, “I suppose some people can weep softly and become more beautiful, but after a real cry, most people are hideous, as if they’ve grown a spare and diseased face beneath the one you know, leaving very little room for the eyes.” Prose about emotion that is grounded in the physical body can prevent us from slipping into abstraction and sentimentality. What do you look like when you cry? Free-write on this for five minutes.
Practice.
Study your face in the mirror for two whole minutes. Later today, study it again. Notice whether your face changes from one time of day to the next. Consider writing about this.
Want More?
Read Heather Christle's The Crying Book, which will inspire all of our reflections this week.
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Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Catherine Ricketts. You can pre-order her new book, The Mother Artist, here.
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