Art by Kate Marion Lapierre
There are moments when the soul glistens, touched by something wordless and wide as sky. A hush gathers. A presence. Gentle and awake. Then, as if drawn from some hidden spring, the eyes grow full, and the body offers its most sacred water.
These droplets arrive quietly, like mist upon hawthorn leaves. They tend the unseen garden within, that sacred place where memory and tenderness move as one. In their clarity rests affection, in their salt, nearness, a warmth shaped by all that has been loved.
Among the green folds of the Celtic lands, this offering finds ancient welcome. In songlines carried by wind across glen and gort, in the long-held lament of Caoineadh, where the voice rises with unbroken feeling, or in the haunting cry of the Ban Sídhe, the soul pours itself into the world through anguish, through reverent cry, through water that knows its own wisdom. These rivers are cradled by the land and return the gift of belonging to those who open their hearts in kind.
From the deep places within, the body's prayer is given shape. Uncalled for by mind, it flows freely when the soul turns toward the sacred. Whether stirred by joy’s wideness or the ache of absence, this water carries no name but presence. Each drop is whole, arising from that ancient knowing which lives beyond thought. In its quiet descent, the eyes become an altar.
Some of this water brings healing. It softens what has long been held in stillness, and moves with the grace of morning light across grass. In its touch, old ache dissolves into warmth. The soil within grows tender again, ready for colour, for bloom, for the quiet return of life. Beneath such moisture, petals unfold where none had yet been seen.
There are moments when the soul rises toward the divine, and devotion draws forth its own offering. These are the moments when the gaze turns inward and upward, lifted as one lifts a candle in evening light. In that rising, water gathers, bright and still. The eyes shine with reverence. The soul gives itself in fullness, as the rose turns its face to the sun, asking nothing.
Prince once sang:
I never meant to cause you any sorrow,
I never meant to cause you any pain,
I only wanted one time to see you laughing,
I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain.
That purple rain is grace made visible. It pours from a place beyond the sky, a soft cascade from the source of all affection. To stand beneath it is to remember one’s place in the great love. The inner garden drinks from this stream. It does not reach — it receives. The soul, bathed in such brightness, shines anew.
There are those waters which fall straight from the heights — quiet, silver, unending. The holy tears of the Christos, beside Lazarus, upon the hill of Jerusalem, and at the hour of the cross, did not descend alone. In their fall, something eternal moved across the earth. These were the waters that carried the weight of love without border. They brought presence into form. They still fall, and they still bless.
Such descending grace carries the fragrance of the sacred. The soul, upon receiving it, flowers again. The garden grows full, not in the striving of bloom, but in the resting. Roots sink deeply. Colours return. Warmth moves through the soil. Light touches everything.
Each droplet carries with it the breath of those who once stood beside us. The lullabies we carry, the gestures remembered only by the skin, the final gaze between souls — all flow through these waters. They shimmer with remembrance. Not as sorrow, but as closeness that never faded.
The garden within does not question this rain. It opens. It listens. The green world beneath the ribs lifts its face toward the sky and finds that it has always belonged. Beneath such blessing, one need not speak. There is no call to explain. The soil understands.
And in the gentle rhythm of this offering, laughter rises. It flows through water and light, shaped not by joy alone, but by the fullness of love. It rings through the rain like a hymn carried by wind. And the soul, open and still, shines with the colour of presence.
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It begins in the chest, soft as mist curling through gorse and thorn, then moves outward, until the eyes become full, their waters rising from some source untouched by language, sacred offerings carried forth from the depth of affection.
Art by Kamila CK, Tears of Joy and Sadness
In the old Celtic lands, water was not just something to drink deeply from, to bathe the land with hope and to carry life into the world. It bore the memory of the ancestors, the weight of lament, the blessings of presence. It flowed through wells tended by unseen hands, across rivers named for goddesses, and down hillsides where stones still hum with old song. The Bán Sídgh, keening on the edge of sight, cried not for tragedy, but for the closeness of love’s return. In her wail echoed the sacred echo of the Caoineadh, a ritual sound, carrying the sorrow of many on a single breath. In these traditions, grief walked with grace. It carried the world. It fed the ground.
The Godess Bóann lent her name to the river Boyne, an arterial pathway meandering through lands sacred to those who lived on the island before the advent of Christianity in the 5th century.
Art by Rachel Dougherty – Rebel (Boann)
Tears, thus understood, are the soul's own rain. Not asked for yet when they come, they come with purpose. They fall upon the inner soil, that quiet place beneath the ribs where memories take root and unseen blossoms stir. And just as rain follows the path it knows, these tears make their way across the face with reverence. Their salt sings of nearness whilst their clarity tells of time and of all that cannot be named.
To water the soul’s garden is to allow yourself to feel in fullness. This garden asks little. It waits. And when watered, it responds with life returning slowly, tenderly, as the hawthorn bud breaks beneath soft rain.
John O’Donohue spoke often of Anam Cara, the soul friend, and in such friendships tears are never turned away. They are welcomed as companions of truth, and signs that the soul has touched what is real. The Celts did not divide sorrow from beauty, nor grief from growth. All were part of the same stream lying open to sky. In their stories, water held blessing and healing.
To cry is to remember aloud. To tend the garden with one’s own waters is to bless what has been, and to prepare the ground for what may yet rise. This need not be loud, nor named. It may arrive at twilight, in a glance, in the silence after a song. From the lullaby sung by a mother whose hands carry centuries, to the silent blessing shed beside a friend’s final breath, to the joy of reunion under a sky brushed with violet — these waters remain. They carry the old songs. They know the names of stars. They ask for nothing, and in that asking, give everything. What matters is the giving, the soft flow of feeling into earth.
As the Light of the Ocean unite in alignment with the Hyades on the 27th of May, I have but three questions for you
1. What within you waits to be softened by the quiet blessing of your own tears? In other-words, in what forgotten corner of the inner garden does tenderness press against the soil, asking only for the gift of presence to stir it into bloom?
2. When have you heard the ancient voice of lament within, not as sorrow alone, but as a sign of affection remembered and made sacred? Might there be a wail, long silenced, that still holds the music of love undiminished?
3. How do you honour the water of your soul, those quiet offerings that rise unbidden, and what do they nourish beneath the surface of your daily life? What petals begin to unfold when you allow what you feel to fall freely, as rain upon waiting earth?
And so the soul drinks. The garden drinks. It does not reason, it receives. It does not question the rain, it opens to it. In this quiet tending, you can begin to feel again the hum of life like a river beneath stone. The soul, once parched, rises with new colour. The garden gives forth fragrance once more.
To shed tears is to stand in truth, and to be held there. It is to sit beside the sacred, with no need for distance. To let the eyes shine with memory, with longing, with love so full it must spill over.
And as the Purple Rain continues to fall, the soul stands open, laughing perhaps, as Prince envisioned, in the downpour of that which touches the eternal and says, I am here. I am loved. I remember.
Completed on the 18th of April 2025, under the falling waters of the heavens, at 10:25 am BST
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