The walk home is long, as it often is. The sun is a hammer on the pavement and the air is thick with the dust of weariness. I am in the world, and this world is not kind. I feel its edges in the terrible news everpresent in media, in the unkind words masquerading as casual conversation, and in the weight of the incessant passing of days. There is a persistent whisper, urging to meet this resistance with my own, to answer this callousness in kind. But today, as every day, I choose instead to be like the moss: that velvet green that greets the stone as a place to begin.

Some people believe a gentle heart is one that has never been tested. They see tenderness as the privilege of those untouched by grief. This is a misconception of the bitter. True softness is rarely a lack of scars and often the very evidence of them. It is the product of a heart that has been broken and has chosen, again and again, to weave itself back together with threads of understanding. Gentleness is a soft resistance against the pull of hardness. Within my own heart, many inclinations reside. There is a resonance of every betrayal and a memory of every trust that was fractured. This echo remains, in a tender place within. Then, there is the voice the world so often applauds. It counsels practicality and speaks the language of transaction. It sees the day as a series of obstacles to defeat and advocates for the fortress of the unyielding.

But above these is the core of my spirit, the nature that decides to be the moss. It knows that stone will offer no gratitude, that rain is just a passing gift and the sun will return with its cruel intensity. Its work is not to conquer the stone, but to gently clothe it. To transform it, softly, into something that offers a moment of comfort. The world trusts in the power of the stone. It is clear, it is definite, it builds walls and paves roads. It is a boundary, a weapon, a fortress. The world asks us to be stones in the wall, to find security in the collective hardness. For certain vocations, this is essential. Let there be those with unwavering resolve. The world needs its blossomless seedlings. However, the world also needs what flourishes in the fissures. It needs the life that does not merely endure hardship, but uses it as the root of its flourishing.

The work of the intellect can be a stone. The fruit of the spirit, however, is so often the moss. In difficulty, it asks not 'how can I prevail?' but 'how can I remain rooted in what makes me blossom?' It has a different order of priorities altogether. It weaves memory and obstacle into something living. It is the choice to absorb the heat of the day and still offer a quiet coolness. And this occasional moment of rest gifted to a stranger is worth everything. There is no other way to live a life of spiritual worth. I have found that most hardened people on earth are not those who have faced the harshest troubles, but those who, receiving the call to softness, to 'moss-work', refused it. They chose to become another rock in a field of stones, forgetting that the only defiance against a cruel world is to become a part of its gentle and unyielding green.

And so, on an ordinary afternoon, when the noise of the world is overwhelming, the armour is there for those who wish to wear it. But I continuously choose to remain vulnerable. I allow the troubling news and the personal disapointments to rest like a stone within. I do not use it to build a wall. I let it be, and begin the work of growing and blossoming around it. Gentleness is a discipline, too. What logical case could be made against self-protection? None. But this is why it's incredibly easy to let yourself be hardened. It takes strenght to remain gentle and kind.