The Language of Tears: A Love Letter to Creation

I have always believed that the heart has a vocabulary that words can never fully capture. It speaks in a silent, shimmering language of feeling—a sudden tightness in the chest, a warmth that spreads through the limbs, the goosebumps, a catch in the breath. And sometimes, when the feeling is too immense, too profound for the body to contain, it speaks in tears.

You never love God and the Universe and Creation Itself until you cry.

I didn’t read this somewhere; I felt it. It was a truth that settled in my bones long before my mind could articulate it. It is not a cry of sadness, though it might wear its costume. It is not a cry of pain, though it might visit in moments of ache. This is a different kind of weeping altogether. It is the soul’s overflow. It is the ultimate, wordless prayer of awe and connection, the final surrender of the intellect to the sheer, staggering beauty of what is.

I feel this most acutely in certain spaces. I have walked into countless temples, mosques, and churches around the world. Some are grand, some are simple. And while I can admire them all for their architecture and history, only some have the power to undo me.

There’s a tiny, prayerful place in my home, its wood worn smooth over the years. I step over the threshold of an ancient temple, and it feels like a sigh. I sit on a rough-hewn bench, and without any warning, the tears come. There is no thought, no specific memory. It is a direct current. It is as if the very walls, saturated with centuries of human hope, grief, and devotion, are whispering, “You are part of this. It is okay. You are home.”  The energy isn’t one of judgment or doctrine, but of immense, compassionate presence.

Conversely, I have been in magnificent, gold-leafed cathedrals, modern temples and pristine, sprawling mosques that, for all their splendour, feel… quiet. Not peaceful-quiet, but empty-quiet. The aura is one of performance and spectacle. The energy is tangled up in the doing—the precise rituals, the correct postures, the transactional prayers. My mind stays busy, analysing the art, the crowd, the procedure. My heart remains untouched, and my eyes stay dry. There is no conversation, only a monologue of human effort.

The difference, I have come to understand, isn’t in the faith it represents, but in the love it holds. The places that break me open are the ones that feel like a living exhalation of love for Creation itself. They are portals out of my own ego and into the sublime mystery that connects the dew on a spiderweb to the spin of a distant galaxy. They remind me that I am a tiny, fleeting, and utterly miraculous participant in it all.

And this is where I feel we have lost the plot a little. We have become so incredibly skilled at the scaffolding of spirituality—the rituals, the rules, the texts, the debates over who is right and who is wrong. We polish the rituals until they shine, but we forget the raw, messy, breathtaking love that the ritual was meant to point us toward. We are arguing over the instruction manual for the spacecraft while never bothering to look out the window at the mind-blowing cosmos rushing past.

Loving God—or the Universe, or Source, or whatever word feels right to you—isn’t about perfect attendance or perfect execution. It is about that catch in your breath when you see the first star of the evening. It is the tear that falls when you hold a newborn’s hand. It is the overwhelming gratitude for a warm cup of tea on a cold morning. It is the humbling awe that comes with standing before a mountain or an ocean.

The tear is the signature of that love. It is the body’s proof that your soul has recognized something true, something beautiful, something infinitely greater than itself. It is the most honest amen I know.

So, if you find yourself in a sacred space, or simply under a sacred sky, and you feel that familiar prick in your eyes, don’t hold it back. Do not be ashamed. Let it fall. It is not a breakdown; it is a breakthrough. It is your heart finally speaking its native tongue, saying the only thing that truly needs to be said to the Universe:

“I see you. I feel you. And I love you back.”