Holy Tears Weeping in the Religious Imagination

"Fascinating and original,Holy Tearsis impressively coherent and should be compelling both to scholars of religion and to cultured readers who normally don't go in for religious themes. It is a model of comparative method in the study of religion, conveying, with all the delight of discovery, many parallels, analogues, and 'braided' similarities in the way religious weeping is understood in different settings while successfully avoiding the 'stuffed birds in a natural history museum' approach. I can't recall the last time I read a comparative or thematic book so rich in ethnographic, mythological, ritual, historical, theological, literary, and iconic anecdotes and detail. Each individual essay is superb; the scholarship throughout is impeccable. This book is truly a feast."--Carol Zaleski, Smith College, author ofOtherworld Journeys: The Life of the World to Come"This remarkable book not only adds a powerful and intellectually fruitful theme to comparative religious studies, but also contributes to current research on religious practices, the body, and material culture. The editors focus on a cluster of vivid physical affective experiences associated with tears, from inchoate, messy emotions, deadly silences, screaming, shame, forgetting, inarticulate despair, and an unforgettable evocation of the sense of God weeping at Ground Zero after 9/11, to the most rigidly controlled ritual practices of ecstatic divine vision and presence."--Steven P. Hopkins, Swarthmore College, author ofSinging the Body of God: The Hymns of Vedantadesika in Their South Indian TraditionPatton, Kimberley C. is the author of 'Holy Tears Weeping in the Religious Imagination', published 2005 under ISBN 9780691114446 and ISBN 0691114447.