Cradle for Our Souls
There is no greater gift you can give to another human being than your response: to his tears, to his words, to his touch; to her hopes, to her dreams, to her prayers.
Response is joining; response is heartfelt participation. Response, of whatever kind – with your words, with your tears, with your heart, with your arms – is a way of standing inside the pain and the joy and the hope and the fear and the imagined isolation of another person’s experience.
“I’m so sorry to hear that”; “That sounds awful”; “How wonderful, I’m so happy for you”; “You must be scared”; “I bet you’re excited”; “I can’t imagine how that must feel.”
Respond. Respond with your heart. Respond as much as you can. Respond no matter how inadequate you feel. Response is the cradle in which, very gently, we rock one another’s vulnerable souls.
Daphne Rose Kingma: A Garland of Love
Nothing to subtract, nothing to add :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment