"In Defense of Gentleness" by Kristen McHenry

Those who move among us in frailty, those who are broken by their first suffering, those who cannot swim, who will not take their share, those who balk at the confounding wisdom of violence, of the bloodlust force required to muscle into the world, to merely live upright, are the ones we come to in the end, begging for gentleness, for proof of mercy, however tenuous. All along, they have guarded the power of our fragility, like a sword we are yet untrained to wield. All along, they have known, and suffered for it. They have held up love like the world itself, thin arms straining to contain its lightness. They are in the end the most resilient, the way the soft bones of a willow triumph by deferring to the storm: Shaking loose their sorrow. Allowing, allowing, allowing.

~ Kristen McHenry "In Defense of Gentleness" I