List: Stuff that’s Made Me Cry

And of course beauty: the beauty that was for him the link between the ships and the woods and the poems. He remembered as though it were but a few days ago that winter night, himself too young even to know the meaning of beauty, when he had looked up at a delicate tracery of bare black branches against the icy glittering stars: suddenly something that was, all at once, pain and longing and adoring had welled up in him, almost choking him. He had wanted to tell someone, but he had no words, inarticulate in the pain and glory. It was long afterwards that he realised that it had been his first aesthetic experience. That nameless something that had stopped his heart was Beauty. Even now, for him, ‘bare branches against the stars’ was a synonym for beauty.
— Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

Movies

• Rudy (1993)
• Saving Private Ryan (1998)
• Life is Beautiful (1997)
• The Pianist (2002)
• American Beauty (1999)
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
• The Iron Giant (1999)

I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time… I guess I could be really pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain. And I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry… you will someday.
— American Beauty

Music

• John Tavener’s Song for Athene
  In 1993, British composer John Tavener wrote the devotional choral work “Song for Athene” to memorialize the tragic death of a young friend.  He took the text from Hamlet, and the sound reflects his Orthodox background (although he has experimented with Sufism and Hinduism). It was played for Princess Diana’s funeral, but I didn’t take note of it until I sung it as part of a Tenebrae service a few years later. The Tenebrae service is like a lessons and carols service, but as the readings follow Christ’s journey to the cross candles are extinguished until the service is over and the congregation leaves in silence. This was the last piece in the service, and it shook the walls of the sanctuary. “Alleluia, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

Books

• Where the Red Fern Grows
• the Grand Inquisitor chapter from Brothers K

Poetry

• The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde