“The person who will not have a softening of the heart will eventually have a softening of the brain!” That warning, issued by G.K. Chesterton more than a half century ago, is particularly relevant for today, a time when virtually everything conspires against tenderness and softness.
Everywhere, today, the atmosphere is one of professionalism, efficiency, toughness, competitiveness, and lean strength. Workplaces, and at times even our homes and church circles, leave little room for softness, be it inefficiency, sentiment, or fat. Even to insert a call for any tenderness and softness to somehow tone this down is to endanger one’s status and respect. Our world has a very restricted place for what is unprofessional, sentimental, inefficient, fat, soft and fragile. Toughness and achievement are what get respect.
For this reason, we often experience our places of work and even our homes as being cold and somewhat brutal. But when we feel this coldness, what we are actually experiencing is our own intimidation. Our fear of being seen as soft, fat, childish, and as unable to handle pressure and meet certain standards of toughness and efficiency pushes us to make every kind of sacrifice rather than let ourselves be so judged. This shouldn’t be so, but, in fact, most often is. Ideally, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be thus intimidated, but, most often, we do. The fact is that we generally do live and work within an atmosphere that is cold and unfeeling.
Given this, perhaps the most important prayer moments we can have each day are those moments which soften the heart, moments which bring us back to eagerness of spirit, hospitality, compassion, and childlike joy. To have a tender moment is to pray. Praying is more than just saying prayers. We are asked to “pray always.” This implies that we need to be praying even when we aren’t formally saying prayers. We share a common heart and a common struggle. To become aware of that is to soften the heart. The world can be hard and, if we aren’t careful, if we do not massage the tender moment as prayer, we will harden too, becoming as untender, cold, and inhospitable as the world itself. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Fear of Tenderness Stifles the Soul” June 1989]