Following on from yesterday, this morning I read this: “I am not yet ready for my heart to soften, I am not yet ready to be vulnerable again, not yet ready to see that there is humanity in my tormentor’s eyes, or that the one who hurt me may also have cried.”
*From Desmond and Mpho Tutu’s The Book of Forgiving (William Collins)*
and so I wrote this….

Did any of you cry?
I’m pretty sure some of you didn’t.
There was a profound lack of empathy;
Few waves reached me here.

I have heard of the human spark in some of you:
One ‘didn’t look at all happy’,
Another tells a tale of sleeplessness,
But mostly there was silence.

And I who read a lot of silence
Have struggled to read this
Because I am hurt and rejected:
your silences feel hard and  cruel.

So, although I can be vulnerable
In other places with different people,
I am not yet ready to be vulnerable again
With what I once considered my spiritual family.

Maybe the humanity I encounter
Beyond the hard edges of the church
Will be the catalyst
that softens my heart again.

On our hearts and on our homes
The Blessing of God
On our school and on our working
The Help of God
In our coming and our going
The Peace of God
In our life and our believing
The Love of God