“We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.”
These were the closing words in the final entry of Etty’s diary. I don’t know that we can expect to be a balm for all wounds. Yet I am haunted by Etty’s willingness to pour herself out: how she lavished her words upon the page and her attention upon the world. How she did this with abandon and without losing herself. In this season, in this life, how will we do this? How will we pour ourselves out with an extravagance that will become a balm for a wounded world?
Bearing/Baring
to Etty
In bearing witness
you bared the truth
the heart
the soul
of the times.
Forged in the depths
of a fire-filled heart,
your daily truths
were olives
pressed to oil,
grapes
crushed to wine.
The brutes laid you bare
to your very bones
but could not stave
the words you bore:
the balm for wounds
the cup of grace
poured out and mingling
for tikkun olam
for the healing of
these broken vessels.
Adapted from Sacred Journeys © Jan L. Richardson
