When you have heard someone’s deepest secret, a confession, or a fear, a pregnant moment appears, as fleeting as the flash before the match head catches fire. A divine reflex, as ancient as days, beckons us to take off our shoes like Moses did when he saw the burning bush. That flicker of light, bursting into the darkness, allows us to truly see. The holy ground of bearing witness. The Celts called it a thin moment, the curtain between heaven and earth as transparent as a wedding veil. Fragile as a hummingbird’s egg.
The boy’s gaze was lowered. I could tell he was searching for the right moment, and the words to convey it. His voice, which had yet to change, cracked when he finally spoke. He told me something that he had never shared with another soul. A pearl of great price was offered. A lump rose in my throat as my heart filled for him. What courage it took. I told him so. The counseling hour was nearly over, and a lightness appeared both in the room and on his face. He had come home to himself. What a delicately precious thing for me to hold.
With a sharp scalpel of a message, the teacher tells his students that it would be better for them to be dragged to the bottom of the sea by a great stone if they should harm a little one.* You can’t die any worse way than that. Before this particular story unfolded, he had a child on his lap. With a double entendre, the concern is for those who are young, as well as those who have just awakened. The weight he’s speaking of is not the stone that could drown us, but the responsibility for a little one’s soul.
