Heavy...

“But somehow I paid the big cost
Inside I felt like I was carryin' the broken spirits
Of all the other ones who lost
When the promise is broken you go on living
But it steals something from down in your soul
Like when the truth is spoken and it don't make no difference
Something in your heart goes cold…”

~ Bruce Springsteen, The Promise

 “…I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little  fist and prayed  to ‘dear God’ in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears! Not worth it, because her tears remained unredeemed. They must be redeemed otherwise there can be no harmony. But how, how will you redeem them? Is it possible? Can they be redeemed by being avenged? But what do I care if they are avenged, what do I care if the tormentors are in hell, what can hell set right here, if these ones have already been tormented? And where is the harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive, and I want to embrace, I don’t want more suffering. And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy the truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price.”

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Rebellion)

“…when the Inquisitor sell silent, he waited some time for his prisoner to reply. His silence weighed on him. He had seen how the captive listened to him intently and calmly, looking him straight in the eye, and apparently not wishing to contradict anything. The old man would have liked him to say something bitter, terrible. But suddenly he approaches the old man in silence and gently kisses him on his bloodless, ninety-year old lips. That is the whole answer. The old man shudders. Something stirs at the corners of mouth; he walks to the door, opens it, and says to him: ‘Go and do not come again…do not come at all…never, never!’ And he lets him out into the ‘dark squares of the city.’ The prisoner goes away.”

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor)

Silence and a kiss are forgiveness and understanding, both louder than any spoken word. But the most difficult to believe and accept.