Beauty and the Beast.

7 comments
This morning is the most breathtakingly beautiful thing you can imagine. The sun was bathing the world in life and health when I woke up at 5.30am - the sky is painfully, perfectly blue, with rare, precious wisps of cloud.
Along the lanes, the cow parsley is still, and buttercups bedazzle the field margins. The ponies are already nose to tail, sunbathing in peace. In the garden, a dark weigela, just bursting into bloom, blushes against the new crepe paper leaves of the alder tree, beneath which a clueless pheasant picks at the fallen cones.
It strikes me how blessed I am to be here, entering a difficult phase of life, one which has dogged me these last days - I will be fifty this year, and you can't pass a half a century without thinking, it's almost over... it's about to begin.
In this country however, I am privileged to wonder how much longer I will marvel at cow parsley, and smile indulgently at pre cockerel woodpigeons, or gaze at that special spring sky blue and think that 'cerulean' barely does it justice.
In so many, many countries, this part of the journey would be over, and the next begun.

I'm reading a book given to me by my friend Ali, whom I can only thank profusely, called 'Extending the Table' - and on this rosy cheeked, blue eyed toddler of a morning, I offer you this quote.

"As my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside, I saw the daughter Ramona was carrying on her hip. The girl's hair was almost white. her eyes peered lifelessly at me from sunken sockets. The child appeared to b desperately ill. Nearly two years old, she was not strong enough to walk.
When Ramona stepped into the kitchen to make some tea, I whispered to Monie, "What's wrong with Ramona's daughter?" She replied quietly "Ramona and her husband can no longer feed all the children they have, so they have chosen this daughter to die."

Charmayne Deninger Brubaker, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Extending The Table, by Joetta Handrich Schlabach
Herald Press, Scottdale PA, 1991

and this I post beneath the ticker reminding me that I need to lose weight?

Don't lets let it spoil our beautiful day. Lets let it change us. Lets do something.

7 comments:

Romany said...

It's a beautiful day here too.

It's good to rethink things as one approaches 50. To give thanks for what we have and ask God how best to use our remaining years on this earth.

I think I've had more passion about my faith and urgency about evangelism since my big birthday.

Romany said...

PS LOVE the sign!

Unknown said...

Glad you love the book - I hoped you would! Love the sign too ! A xxx

Ellen said...

Absolutely gorgeous note, on all counts: the blessings, the beauty, the extravagance, the sorrow.

Lucy said...

My goodness - what country and time period was that quote from? I cannot imagine "choosing" which child should die in that way.

Jackie said...

Bangladesh in the 1980s.
I'm sure none of us can imagine being put in such a terrible position. But that doesn't make it go away.

Lynn said...

gosh, I cant begin to contemplate.
LX

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