Hearts' Wings

We must not scare the children,
because we can cut off
their hearts' wings

By Sandra Rincon; translated by Joel Klassen

Introduction As our children return to school, blessed with educational opportunities, we remember the children who are “scared” because of the violence surrounding their lives. May we not “cut off” the children’s “hearts’ wings” and may we allow our lives to be touched by children, so that our “hearts may start to fly."

This is from a May 27, 2005, CPTNet (Christian Peacemaker Teams) release and is used with permission.

When I heard one of the oldest residents of the communities of the Opón say this, I wondered: What does it mean to cut off the heart's wings? A series of images began to pass through my head and the answer seemed very obvious and very painful, for children, for men, and for women without distinction.

• Children who see their parents killed or see their mothers' bodies mutilated by violence
• Children who are mercilessly beaten by those close to them
• Children who are forced to leave a green and free countryside where they can play barefoot and go to a cold, grey city that looks down on them because they have dirty faces
• Children who stop smiling for joy at hearing the song of a bird or at seeing monkeys jumping between trees, and start crying because of the cold of the city and the hardness of the faces around them
• Children who in every glance directed their way search for hope, comfort and protection
• Children who suffer hunger, thirst, and who lack a loving home
• Children who give up dreaming of sun-filled dawns, and learn to live with grey dusks
• Children who exchange their fantastic toys and games for arms, forced work, abandonment, and disillusion

How many times have the wings of our hearts been cut by the hard reality
of our family, our society, and our world?

How many times have we ourselves cut the wings of other people's hearts?

How many times have we cut the wings of our own hearts?

How many times have our wings grown back again?

How many times will the wings of the hearts of today's children grow back?

When will our shared life become a story where everytime we open our hands, the heart of one of us will fly to freedom and happiness? Is this but an illusion?

Now that we are grown-up, would it be that we fear that our hearts might fly? Even though we have wings?

After a time with these images, I looked around and three children of the community were running toward me, and one of them, maybe the shyest, came very quickly and gave me a kiss on the cheek: I felt that my heart was starting to fly!