Tenderness and tears

It's been a dark, grey Good Friday; a day filled with inexorable rain and a wintry chill. Beneath a leaden sky everything and everyone looks sodden and bedraggled, though at least the colours of the well-washed flowers outside my window shine that bit more clearly.

At some point, as I watched the rain pound our garden, my eye was drawn to this resin sculpture, which I had brought with me from Oxford. It's one of the few things currently in the garden, which until recently was filled with builders' materials, the monochrome bareness of its surroundings making it especially noticeable.

And in this sculpture I saw pieta and mutual consolation; tears mingled with tenderness. I saw Mary cradling her Son, and I saw Mary Magdalene comforting her. I saw that fleeting moment of gift and intimacy between Jesus and Veronica, and the weeping women of Jerusalem clinging to each other as Jesus reaches out to them. I saw pain and grieving, but also comfort and caress.

And at its heart a space hollowed out by grief, waiting, hoping to be filled...

And you... what do you see?