When You Are Tempted to Go Numb

When You Are Tempted to Go Numb

Do not be ashamed
if you still cry
when the bombs fall
in a place you cannot pronounce.
This, too, is a kind of keeping faith.

The world will tell you
that distance excuses silence.
That grown-ups don’t weep
over someone else’s child.
That war is complicated.
That peace is naïve.

But keep your heart soft.
Do not make a theology
out of numbness.

Light a candle.
Sweep a floor.
Weep and bless and work,
in the same breath.

Pray for peace
with your feet in the dirt.

Let your heart break
toward mercy, not despair.
Let your tears be small refusals—
not of sorrow,
but of forgetting.

Do not believe
that resurrection begins in sunlight.
It begins underground,
where no one sees,
among roots and tombs
and people who still choose
to love anyway.

And if you wonder
where Christ is in all this—
he’s not above it.
He walks into the rubble,
scarred and unhurried,
still asking:
Do you love me?