A wonderful word is coercion

A  wonderful word is coercion
On it I cast no aspersions.
But to coerce is not good,
Force unwithstood
Is not what will grow our nasturiums.

Sometimes our will is a force
But virtue can’t come just by choice.
Like a flower from a seed
Our virtues we breed
As we listen for that still,little voice.

In school we were given an impression
That knowledge implies good decisions;
So we learned   virtues and vice
The wrong and  the  nice
The existence of hell as a prison.

Believing that terror is a good,
They frightened us with their cold blood
In the Confessional we shivered;
And the wood round us quivered
They’d have tortured us more if they could.

So this education itself was a vice
The nuns and the priests hit us twice
Once in the class
And again during Mass
Where we wondered if the Wafer was Christ.

And having this question in mind
Was a sin of a serious kind
We sinned against Faith
That delicate Wraith
So no personal truths could we find

I have found God in the depths
Where with kindness he surrounds those who’ve wept
But he makes no demands
As his Love understands
To the paths of our own truths we’ve kept