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Good morning. Life is really a one-way street, … one should not ever try to go back. That was the wisdom that crime novelist Agatha Christie once put into the mouth of one of her favourite characters. It bears repeating far beyond the pages of a whodunnit. It isn’t as though we might ‘go back’ after life-changing events, of course. The truth is we simply cannot. Whether personal: after the trauma, after the accident, after discovering the infidelity of a trusted partner, … Or on a much larger scale: after the pandemic, after the massive violence and tragedy of Ukraine … it’s foolishness to suppose that we can go back to life just as it was before. We must live with disability, pain, grief, betrayal, or displacement. The question is how? If only Nietzsche’s much-repeated (and even sung) aphorism, ‘what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger’ were true. For the truth is that trauma that doesn’t kill can leave debilitating fear, all-consuming hatred, chronic pain. But perhaps There’s another way forward, - to turn the wounds of the past into a wiser future, more able to give and to forgive, creative in new ways – moving on from a past which is not forgotten, but redeemed. As Easter approaches, I’m reminded of the most shocking symbol I know of this way forward, not back, from trauma. The early Christians record that their experiences of the resurrected Christ include the visible – and even tangible – wounds of crucifixion. There’ no forgetting here, no pretence that humankind can return to a time before that horrific act of cruelty. One of Jesus’ disciples, St. Thomas, even gets bad press from doubting the resurrection accounts of his colleagues and declares that he will not believe unless he is able to put his finger where the nails were and put his hand into the sword wound. John’s gospel records that a week later, Jesus offered him just that experience – and as a result Thomas actually becomes the first of the disciples to confess, ‘My Lord and my God.’ The transformation of past wounds into future wisdom, the lessons of a pandemic into neither forgetfulness nor fear, but into a renewed care for others, the losses of war not bequeathing hate, but a safer world order – these all require huge effort and leadership. But new life never emerges from painting over the scars of past pain, but from transforming them into something glorious.