I am one of those men much given to sentiment. Or perhaps much taken by sentiment would be a better description of the state in which my emotions can put me. Carried along on a wave of empathy, sympathy, or what was old-fashionedly termed "tender regard", I am apt to become misty or teary, to feel a lump in my throat and to feel my heart swell within my chest.
I suspect that men are actually more prone to this than are women. While women are characterized as much more emotional than men, some studies have shown that men may actually be more prone to such "womanly" stereotypes as emotional stress over a relationship or to falling in love at first sight. My own experience is that women are much more practical and levelheaded than popular images suggest. The myth of stoic manhood may be due to the fact that men often confine their sentiment into accepted channels. Even the strongest man can weep at the ending of "Saving Private Ryan". Even the most stiff-upper-lip Englishman shows unabashed emotion in regard to his dogs, his horses, or his Jaguar. The same maxim holds true for sports events and the birth of children, we are encouraged to show trembling chins and flushed faces at these at the very least.
In my own case, my own strongest sentiment seems to come about through grace, when I am aware of God's presence working through or around me. I remember several years ago sitting at the midnight Christmas service transported at Chip Dawson's solo rendition of "O Holy Night", eyes tightly closed and tears streaming down my cheeks in the glow of candlelight from the sconces around the sanctuary and from the altar, not able to do anything but to gasp at the glory of it all. I remember having a horrible day driving to work one morning, distracted and impatient and unappreciative, to be shocked by a sudden and brief flurry of snowflakes that did nothing more than to dust my windshield, but which opened my eyes to the miracle of beauty revealed in the midst of dreariness. I remember working at Birmingham's downtown soup kitchen several times, how I trembled at the joy of feeding all those hungry and smiling homeless men, how my heart filled with the honor of sharing food and fellowship not with poor broken-down wretches but with fellow humans down on luck and in need of being treated as treasured guests at the table. I remember meeting with a lady visiting her infant cousin's grave in Elmwood Cemetery where I worked, that I gave her a ride out to his grave. When I asked her his name, she was unsure of the spelling, and had to roll up her sleeve and check the spelling on the poorly-done tattoo on her arm which memorialized him. I heard her story as we drove out to it, how he had died at the hands of his mother's boyfriend, how the mother defended the boyfriend and fractured the family, how the mother was unwilling to even put a grave marker to remember her little boy so that his cousin got her tattoo so he would not be forgotten, how she took a bus across town and then walked to the cemetery to visit him and then always had to ask for assistance to find his unmarked grave. I stood by her as she prayed over his grave and left flowers on the bare little plot, then gave her a ride back to her home so she would not have to take another bus, and when I left her at her little public housing apartment with the dented metal chair and broken flowerpot on the porch I pulled over into a gas station parking lot and wept at her loyalty, her love, and her selfless devotion to his memory.
I hope I never become so inured to all this that I lose my ability to be astounded at life. That I always feel a lump in my throat or a tear in my eye when I am learning a new lesson in humility, that I am always thunderstruck in the presence of sublime music and beauty, that God's grace in action to heal others always makes my heart stir.
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
-U2, Yahweh
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you;
and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a
heart of flesh.
-Ezekiel 36:26, Revised Standard Version
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