By: JANA GREENE

When I was a child, my parents sent me to catechism classes for a few months, before they decided Catholicism wasn’t for them, and I have a few spotty memories.

I have always loved big words, and I remember learning the concept of “canonization,” which is when someone who lived a really stellar life could be declared a saint. According to Wikipedia, it is also declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of saints.

The extent of my experience with “catalogues” was that Sears put out a “Big Book” and that thing was the epitome of childhood joy! The be-all-end-all; about three solid inches of dog-eared, magic-marker-circled laminated possibility. The funny thing is that when it came in the mail each year, I cried. I sobbed with overwhelming emotion. It was TOO. MUCH. If I had had the language, I would have said, “I CANNOT EVEN WITH THIS.”

There were tears later for excerpts from the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, but that’s a story for another time.)

How odd that despair and all-encompassing joy make us cry.

I still cry, but not in as much despair. At lease not most days.

Despair, when taken to liberally, only buys me more of itself. It confirms what every trauma of my life told you was truth. It makes me conduct life as if in mourning clothes – black and somber (but also a little bit enveloping and cozy.) Comforting because it’s familiar, and destructive for the same reason.

Here’s the thing: As far as I can tell, life is a tearful experience. No getting around it.

Tears are salty, either way. Whether they are generated by grief or extreme joy, there they are! Manifestations of our Big Feels, rolling down our cheeks for all the world to witness. No two spurred by identical emotion, each unique to the life experience that prescribed it.

I suspect that God is forever traipsing along behind us, collecting every single one; and not minding a bit to get his hands wet (or even snotty.) I don’t know why the image of the Almighty Cosmic Creator collecting our tears is so comforting to me. It’s validating, I guess.

So many of us were sprinkled by “holy water” to be baptized in the church tradition. How odd then that the sprinklings that we offer God so often roll down our cheeks. I like the thought that none of it goes to waste; that all tears are valid. (Are tears holy water too? Maybe they’re the holiest.)

I laugh more than I used to, too. Sometimes at the absolute absurdity of life. I mean, you can’t be serious, right? This place is crazy, man! Humanity is writhing right now. Each facet of our existences seems upended and spent. We are divided, swamped with information, fed a diet of doom, and all of this can make a very “connected” world feel very lonely.

Our instinct is to make our woe a solitary endeavor, but we’re all connected. Joy to joy, woe to woe. As best as I can figure, there are a trillion filaments of light woven between and through us all. That’s what vanquishes the darkness.

So yes, I cry. Some days, quite a bit. There are many times I “cannot even,” when my physical pain and mental/emotional pain are trying to outdo each other in a footrace, a good, cleansing cry is where it’s at. Not as a concession to the pain, but to spite it.

Being Earthside is wretched, brilliant, brutal, beautiful, and exquisite. It is a predetermined number of dog-eared possibilities.

But I’ve made it through 100 percent of the mess thrown at me so far, and so have YOU. That’s a pretty good track record. All we can do is try not to let our tears make us salty toward an open-wound world.

We become venerated by our tears. Canonized. Made whole and sainted, I think. All the really cool saints weep on the regular. I believe Jesus did, and why would he not? He rejoiced with weeping and wept with deep, abiding sorrow. He himself is the (Big?) Book of Life, not constrained by the two-thousand years of dog-eared, magic-marker-circled laminated possibility we have assigned him and called “Truth.”

Teardrop by teardrop. Emotional outburst by emotional outburst. Primal screaming session by primal screaming session. Whatever it takes to get through this stellar experience of life together.

Blessed be, friends.