Hope gives you wings

 

 

"They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for."
(Tom Bodett)

 

 

What is Hope?

As a word, we scatter it like seed throughout our everyday conversations; we hope it won't rain, we hope to get there by two, we hope England will beat Slovenia, we hope you feel better, hope to hear from you soon. Yet this benign four letter word, so handy and familiar, has such huge connotations.

Hope is a word of wonderment, desire and longing, chance and miracles. A little word of really epic, Biblical proportions. It fuels our dreams, it holds Love's hand; life partners with Trust, they sit like a gentle mantle around the broad shoulders of Faith itself.

Heady stuff, this Hope. I've always loved Emily Dickinson's poem " Hope Is The Thing With Feathers": my association of Hope with angels, flight and rescue I suppose. Like many, I feel comforted when a white feather flutters towards me; a message of goodwill and encouragement from the heavens. Although in this part of Brighton, perhaps I should be more wary of flying feathers and the well-being of my feathered friends, Jonathan Seagull and his somewhat hooligan companions.

In a week when one of my neighbours has tried to do something unspeakable to Jonathan, the bird's hope and faith in general and in me in particular feels humbling. He was back in the comparative safety of my garden within an hour of the shameful incident,  around my feet and within spitting distance of the cat. I hope my neighbour realises that Jonathan is indeed a fine specimen of a species protected by the law; I hope Jonathan doesn't rely on that intelligence.

Hope is indeed the birds chirping in my garden each dawn and dusk, possibly recognising that the strange dweller of a place bedecked with lanterns, chimes and Buddhas is probably good for a digestive biscuit or two. Hope is my own persistent watering of what a friend described as a marooned twiglet until it became a fuchsia once more. Most essentially, Hope is that fuchsia.

Mankind is all hopefulness. We have built our society on Hope. Victor Hugo noted that our future is made up of today's hopes. And indeed we live our lives in the hope of becoming someone's memory.

Hope really does "spring eternal". Like Faith, it is naturally occurring; as essential to the spirit as nourishment is to the human body. Yet it's evolution can't be tamed or mapped by our sciences; we cant reproduce it in a test-tube. The unsung, extra-sensory gift; it's the Desert Island Discs luxury that we all have as standard/

A few years ago, I toyed with the idea of a bright tattoo. I wondered about a Celtic cross on my upper arm, but my sister's reminder that I've inherited sturdy Celtic limbs chastened me that I might resemble a merchant seaman. The only other design I was taken by was a pair of angel-wings between my shoulder blades. To me, they signified optimism and nurturing, being both protected and protective. Finally, friends convinced me I could hold on to my dreams without looking like a reject from The Only Way Is The A27.

Far away from the angels, I often hear folk hoping for darker things than a football score or a lottery win. They "hope" that others will get what they deserve, or come undone; terminal illness is often a preferred option. Can something as unsullied and beautiful as Hope really become hitched to a curse?

Hope is universal. Like Freedom, it is not divisible; you cannot have it at someone else's expense. I'm certain that Slovenians were praying just as fervently for an extra goal against England a few days ago; Hope cheers on both sides of what is, truthfully, only ever a Beautiful Game, favouring only skill and recognising fortune.

I'm equally sure that my seagull-hating neighbours hope I will pack up and move and take my feathered friends, chimes and lanterns with me. By return, I hope they'll leave me and Jonathan in peace. Hope is not partisan. And war, where Hope flourishes as battlefield flowers and kindles homefires - how can Hope ever be available to our enemies? The neutrality of Hope should be comforting: Hope didn't want conflict in the first place.

If I can find some inexpensive, vegetarian-friendly angel-wings in Brighton, I hope to wear them to our Pride festival this summer. Meanwhile, the white quill feather I found on my doorstep at the weekend is now propped in one of my garden pots. I've checked that it isn't one of Jonathan's. He's already given it a beady eye. I hope he doesn't mind.

 

 

 

 

"Hope Is The Thing With Feathers"

(Emily Dickinson) 

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

 

 

 

"Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened."
(Charles H. Spurgeon)

 

"The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveller than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination."
(Marion Zimmer Bradley)

 

"Hope is a waking dream."
(Aristotle) 

 

 )

"Not About Angels"  Birdy

A very special service

"Fear is the enemy of love."

(St Augustine)

"The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind."

(E.B. White)

I really didn't want to go on Jury Service. I felt unprepared and ill equipped to formally "judge" others' actions or intent. Three weeks on and after a particularly harrowing case that reduced me to tears in court on more than one occasion, I feel privileged to have been randomly selected. I was fortunate to have been kept in a confined space without the usual diversions with eleven extremely conscientious and caring people. All cut from very different cloths, we wove ourselves together comfortably and seamlessly by the end of the trial. Faced with disturbing evidence and the raw emotion of some of the witnesses, my fellow jurors restored my belief that there are good people and true out there.
Obviously, I can't say much about the case and the private lives of those involved have already been ripped apart and raked through, however necessarily. Graphically evidenced for us; the terrible collision of lives bruised by lack of self worth and faith; the inexorable impact of an abuse of affection and a failure to protect innocence.
I've only had a couple of boyfriends in my whole life; it may be that I'm a singularly unappealing individual, but I prefer to think my single status is largely due to not wanting to compromise my values and beliefs. I've certainly preferred to wake alone on a cold winter's morning than to lie in fear for anyone or anything entrusted to me, whether that be a child, my sanity or my soul. There but for fortunate and grace, I guess.
Our jury, in equal numbers male and female, admitted to losing sleep during the trial and feeling deeply shaken after our verdict was given. We had become aware of the enormity of relatively small words such as reason and doubt. I think we all gained a new respect for the resolve of the judiciary and the resilience of the surrounding administration.
There was a child in this case who is, thank God, alive and safe. I feel profoundly changed by my experience, if only that I feel more securely me. I hope to stay in touch with a couple of the jurors and would be genuinely delighted to cross paths with any of them in the future. It occurs to me that "jury" can be a very special service. And yet still nothing compared to the beautiful and terrifying responsibility of parenting; at it's finest, a life sentence.

"Unloving"

(Carol Ann Duffy)

Learn from the winter trees, the way

they kiss and throw away their leaves,

then hold their stricken faces in their hands 

and turn to ice; 

or from the clocks, 

looking away, unloving light, the short days 

running out of things to say; a church, 

a ghost ship on a sea of dusk. 

Learn from a stone, its heart shape meaningless, 

perfect with relentless cold; or from the bigger moon, 

implacably dissolving in the sky, or from the stars,

lifeless as Latin verbs. 

Learn from the river, 

flowing always somewhere else, even its name,

change, change; learn from a rope 

hung from a branch like a noose, a crow cursing, 

a dead heron mourned by a congregation of flies. 

Learn from the dumbstruck garden, summer’s grave, 

where nothing grows, not a Beast’s rose; 

from the town veil of a web; 

from our daily bread: 

perpetual rain, nothing like tears, unloving clouds; 

language unloving love; even this stale air 

unloving all the spaces where you were.

"I think the thumb print on the throat of many people is childhood trauma that goes unprocessed and unrecognized." 

(Tom Hooper)

"Skinny Love" Birdy (version)

"And I told you to be patient 

and I told you to be fine; 

and I told you to be balanced 

and I told you to be kind; 

and if all your love is wasted 

then who the hell was I? 

Who will love you?

Who will fight? 

And who will fall far behind?" 

(From "Skinny Love", Justin Vernon)

"Childhood is a promise that is seldom kept."

(Ken Hill)

In black and white

"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life."

(Golda Meir)

(All photos: Gigi, album) My Dad Tony with Mum in his native Belgium.

Today is the anniversary of my Dad's passing and he's now been apart from this seen world for more than half of my lifetime. One of the things I remember most strongly about him is laughter and indeed his laugh. For a man who was not tall and who was non-confrontational and contemplative by nature, Dad's laugh was big, sudden and random. He was generally softly spoken but he laughed like Sid James. American writer Anne Lamott once said that laughter is "carbonated holiness": I can see my Dad was a very spiritual man who was capable of great joy in small things.
There was an honesty in Dad's laugh. So often, I'm aware of manufactured giggles and mannered groans. Hunour these days often seems so structured and sophisticated, even class conscious. I've inherited Dad's very out-of-the-box sense of humour; it encompasses the bizarre and the slapstick and the everyday ironic. I often open up one of his belly laughs; my mother used to think it was something of a curse in a woman but now I feel it's a blessing; my Dad's little route-finder for joyfulness.
My Dad was a deep thinking and well read man but was completely free of pretension; he had no real material aspirations either, although he always wanted to do the best for my mother, and later on, for my sister and me. My Dad may have blushed a little bit about Brigitte Bardot, Bernadette Devlin (now McAliskey) and that blonde bird from Abba, but Mum was the love of his life. My Mum was aware that he'd been quite inexperienced romantically before her and he seemed to wear his faithfulness like his favourite tweed teaching jacket. 

He'd been nearly halfway into a monastery when he met Mum; I can see how the tranquility and humility of the monastic life had appealed to my father. Lord knows what they would have made of his laugh. My father settled into teaching, interpreting and translating. His little study at home in south London was packed with books, newspapers, postcards from various monasteries and his cassettes of Gregorian Chant. Mum sometimes despaired of his lack of personal ambition later in life, but I realise Dad was always aware of the bigger picture from his little corner in it. It sounds cheesy, but he had high hopes for the world.

"Conscience is God present in man."

(Victor Hugo)

Dad with my sister.

After Dad died, I felt I envied my sister the quality one-to-one time she had with him when she was little. Once the family left Belgium for London and I was born, my Dad was always working; never less than two jobs and sometimes as many as four. When I was about seven years old, Mum would often go out on Saturdays, from lumchtime until the shops closed, with my Auntie Barbara and my sister, who was then fifteen going on twenty five (complete with heels and Audrey Hepburn cigarette holder). Still with yellow plaits and plastered knees, I felt very un-grown up and initially very left out: my Dad would be in his study for most of the day, translating and marking students' papers. But it became an easy habit that my Dad would emerge in time for the football results; even though Dad's idea of sport was "It's a Knockout"). He would make beans on toast or grilled kippers (these were the days when I couldn't even spell vegetarianism) and strong, sweet tea and we would watch "Doctor Who" together.
It occurs to me now that we didn't say very much; I would watch the good Doctor avidly while my Dad chuckled or tutted. He never picked up a newspaper or a book or looked bored. It was hugely comfortable and comforting just to sit quietly. I've realised across the years just how like my father I am. I love to laugh, I love music, colour and cleverness, but sometimes it's just lovely to be still and safe in your own company or with someone close.

"Laughter is the sound of the soul dancing. My soul probably looks like Fred Astaire." 

(Jared Kintz)

In Northern Ireland: Dad with his Poirot-style moustache, with my sister holding one of the baby cousins; my cousins Lucy and Charlie Joe are in front of him. I'm playing with my hair as Mum looks on from the doorway.

I'll acknowledge that I was usually described as being academically bright; it was quietly anticipated by my parents that I would probably follow Dad and become a teacher of some variety. I was never the kind of little girl who said she wanted to be an air hostess or even a princess. I wanted to be Tarzan's Jane at one point and then of course Dr Who's next lovely assistant. When I was in my early teens, at convent school and also having gone through all my preliminary dance exams, I announced that I wanted to be a nun or a ballerina. My Mum was exasperated and said I would do neither; that I was an eejit and would have to speak to my father. He was very calm about it all and didn't appear phased by the propositions of having a daughter in cloisters or on stage in tights. Having asked me why I felt I should or could do either, he simply said that from his point of view, it appeared that I could be a dancer and still pray, but that he didn't think there was a whole lot of pirouetting in most convents. He also told me I didn't have to be anything, but that I should try to do something with my life. He told me I didn't need to do anything other people might think of as "big" just for the sake of it. My Dad liked Victor Hugo's concise eloquence; he felt that death was really nothing, but not to have lived your life must be terrible.
Although he was a non-judgmental man, rights and wrongs were black and white to my father; he was assured of his own responses and responsibilities. He had a generosity of spirit and a talent for people that I feel made it very difficult to dislike him. Certainly, Dad didn't seem to have a bad word to say about anyone, although his sense of injustice was relentless. I hope I've inherited some of the latter at least: I take it as a compliment when I'm dismissed as an "effing do-gooder". 
I haven't done anything big with my life and may never do. I can see now that my Dad could have been a writer, but he was essentially content with what some might have called the minutiae of his life. In the Great Scheme of Things for other folk, my Dad may not have done anything big: his home and family became his vocation. Yet after he died, I discovered Dad had funded several students in Africa so they could change their lives. His letters to various publications about injustice in Northern Irish politics brought him to the attention of both the paramilitaries and Scotland Yard. He was regularly sent jokes by Bishop Desmond Tutu; they carried on corresponding after Dad taught the bishop languages. Dad called him Des. And Des has that same unexpectedly raucous laugh that Dad had, that delightful burst of animation in the midst of such gentleness.
I once described my Dad as a mixture of Desmond Tutu, Richard Briers and Hercules Poirot, but essentially he was very much his own person. I know now you can't be true to another person or to your God without being true to yourself. Because of Dad, some things will always be very black and white to me: love, truth, faith, justice. For a quiet, not-tall guy, my father probably had all the biggest things covered.
When I was little, my Dad would often play records on Sunday afternoons; music that both he and Mum had been moved by over the years. In between the Irish Rebel Songs, Edith Piaf, Jim Reeves and Abba, there would usually be The Seekers; two songs in particular. Since both my parents died, I can't hear "The Carnival is Over" without dissolving. On the other hand, I've never found their version of Tom Springfield's "Another You" anything other than joyful. It sounds like an affirmation; I always feel it reminded my parents of how they met. It reminds me of how I still want to live my life. Sometimes. things really can be that simple.

"Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."

(Desmond Tutu)

"Another You"  The Seekers

"If they gave me a fortune

My treasure would be small;

I could lose it all tomorrow

And never mind at all;

But if I should lose your love dear,

I don't know what I'll do

For I know I'll never find another you."

(Tom Springfield)

Book Club

We each have a story through this life. I firmly believe that people, events and places come into our lives for a reason: they are part of our story and we are part of theirs. This past week, my story has seemed quite disjointed, as though it's carrying on regardless of me, thinking I was a central player; taking curves and making cuts that I was not anticipating.
I now know that the word "history" originates from the Greek "historia", meaning the inquiry into and acquiring of knowledge; therefore, really encompassing the past and anything that evolves from it. When I was a little girl, I remember enchanting a teacher called Mr Snewin by explaining to him that history itself was really God's book - His Story. As a heady adult now, I still like the sound of that. 
As a Catholic, I believe my story has been created by God and presented to me as a gift, almost like a boxed set of something wonderful. What I take from the unfolding of it, what I learn and how I grow with that knowledge could be my gift of gratitude in return to the Author of the Universe.
I'm in the middle of statutory Jury Service and although I was a reluctant juror thrust into a very uncomfortable case, it now feels like part of my story for another tale to be known to me and for me to play an unexpected part. Most of the other jurors look very familiar to me, although we've never obviously encountered each other before: indeed, we are all very different and yet we seem to gel. Anyone who already knows me will appreciate what a Gigi-like statement that is. 
When people and elements of your own life seem to let you down at every turn, it's important to keep faith with what feels true to you; your story. We shouldn't try to live other people's lives for them or write their lines, any more than we should seek to pass that responsibility on to others.
I've learned to look out for those in life who are meant to be part of my story and to see how I can best serve or colour theirs. This is a short post, because I am weary from court, because I have an injured hand; because I feel just a few fleeting words could wing their way to those I call Friends, whose own pages might also seem smudged or faint at the moment. 
A quote from an uncredited source seems to hang in the room around me at the moment: "It's hard to wait around for something you know might never happen, but it's even harder to give up when it's everything you ever wanted." My own blinking and twittering little emotional SatNav tells me not to mess with the route if I can't better it. Sometimes, chapters close suddenly and new ones open in unimagined scenery and unforeseen circumstances. Your story will still be there: look for the surprisingly warm smile, the name or place that rings a bell, the something that you always wanted to do. Trust that God may appear to change what He wants for or from you, but that the only agenda is your fulfillment  Read between your own lines, take comfort in your own essential smallness in the greatest story that will ever be told.

"People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around." 

(Terry Pratchett)

"Wayfaring Stranger"  Ed Sheeran (version)

"I have my own story, and I love my story, but I know I can't tell it alone, not now. Because stories have centres, but they don't have edges. No boundaries." 

(Andrew Clements)

A ginger tale

"I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little they become it's visible soul."

(Jean Cocteau)

(All photos: Gigi, album)

A couple of pictures of a very stoical Ginger, the tom-from-next-door, especially for Annie, who wanted to know more about him. Immediately, I have to say Ginger is not "my cat": he very much belongs to the family who live next door to me and simply visits, but he's a much-loved visitor. I don't think my neighbour will mind me featuring her cat in the blog: he lounged about like a professional diva for his photo shoot,  breaking his pose only to attack my bootlace or clean something unspeakable from his tail.

Ginger is a long, big-pawed, big-haired cat who's terrified of hoovers, Kings of Leon and other loud noises. He's slightly cross-eyed and also veers from extreme clumsiness to utter slinkiness. He insists on leaping onto the sloped roof of my old lean-to shed, only to slide off it in slow motion every time, with an air of gritted nonchalance. In spite of his size, he has the most pitifully tiny meow. Unfortunately for my feathered friends, he's actually a fearsome and prolific hunter. However, he still likes a little hot water in his milk at this time of year, just to take the chill off things. 

A total drama-queen, if there's a hole somewhere, Ginger will drop down it; a large puddle and he'll fall into it. He's scared of spiders and even tomato stalks or my grass plant cuttings that vaguely resemble spiders. My neighbour says he loves king prawns but he'd clearly be meowing up the wrong hibiscus to think he'd get such fare from me. He does get a nice dollop of soft cheese with his fishy cat biscuits. I have given him veggie pate which he smacks away at without knowing the difference. He developed a taste for fruity fromage frats after sticking his whiskers into a bowl when I wasn't watching his every big-footed move; but he'll only eat strawberry flavoured.

He likes to sit on the stairs and watch bemusedly as I potter about; at least once a week he'll poke his head through the banisters and have to be eased out of them. He's a frequent companion as I type this blog early in the morning or late at night: if blogger's block sets in or I start to droop, Ginger has been known to sit on the laptop; enough to make any hard-drive crash.

Shortly after I moved here, Ginger disappeared. After four days of searching and calling, my neighbour despaired that he must be dead. I felt sure that he was alive and very near, but in serious trouble. On the fourth night, I walked down to the disused warehouses at the end of the road, padlocked off from the street and due for demolition. I called him for nearly an hour until I heard the faintest, weakest little mew. I fetched my neighbour and at two in the morning, some very amused firemen arrived and broke into the rusty upper floor of the warehouse. A terrified Ginger sprang out into the dark, only emerging at my backdoor as dawn was breaking. He'd been stuck in a compartment furthest away from the street, apparently surviving on pools of rainwater. He'd obviously gotten himself in but a door had closed shut behind him. Like me, he still has a penchant for climbing; like me, he can't always get back down.

I think we bonded after his little escapade. He was very jumpy for a few months afterwards and lost a lot of his bushy tail, now grown back even fluffier. He was a wonderful companion while I had pleurisy recently, purring patiently and following from room to room while I was housebound. He purrs almost constantly; I talk to him a lot while he's here and it's occurred to me that he may actually be groaning. 

He's extremely loyal, following my neighbour around the corner to the convenience store and waiting patiently for her outside; thankfully never showing any interest in the relentlessly busy main road. The other day, he arrived at my front door carrying a bedraggled piece of blue ribbon which he proudly dropped on my doormat; regrettably, his more usual offerings are freshly caught and less easily disposable.

I try not to let him sleep here: he isn't mine, at the end of the day. He comes in for his biscuits, some milk, a grooming, forty winks in his favourite spot in the hall (under the radiator) and a bit of a chat. When my neighbour and her family moved to this street some seven years ago, Ginger had apparently been left by previous residents. Maybe he moved away with them and found his way back here: who could leave such a wonderful animal behind? My neighbour took him in and called him "Ginger" because that's essentially what he is. She tells me he was already fully grown and I realise he may be getting on a bit now. I'm trying not to think about that.

When my own very beautiful, slightly quirky little cat died some years ago, I couldn't bear to replace her and still feel she's irreplaceable. I told myself I would welcome a cat if it adopted me, which is what my Sooty did. She arrived in my life when she was about three months old and died with her head on my lap, some fourteen years later. My belief is that God brings people, animals and places into our lives for a reason. I think Ginger simply appreciated that I was a cat-person-without-cat and decided to take me in paw.

When he started visiting me, he didn't know what to do with the cat toys I bought for him. I've spent several exhilarating if exhausting evenings, throwing catnip mice and balls with bells up and down the stairs and retrieving them myself. Ginger usually simply watches until I collapse on the sofa, when his work here is done, One of us is clearly eccentric; I'm pretty sure he feels it's not him.

Hi to Annie-the-Pagan and also to Christine and Colin, who care about all creatures (including Gigis).

"Hmm. Ginger you say? Really?" My own irreplaceable Sooty Poshpaws

"What greater gift than the love of a cat."

(Charles Dickens)

"Love  Cats"  The Cure

"Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat." 

(Mark Twain)

"Know you what it is to be a child?"

"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live."

(Pope John Paul II)

"Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief"

(Francis Thompson)

I wanted write something respectfully dedicated to the memory of Tia Sharp and all the children who have suffered physically, mentally or emotionally at the hands of those they should have been most able to trust. A couple of people have warned me off doing this, particularly as those charged with or bailed on suspicion of Tia's murder must be afforded the due process of the legal system. But one thing is irrefutably clear at this stage: the death of twelve year old Tia was concealed by members of her own family. When I read that Tia's mother had been told her own mother was implicated in Tia's murder, I wanted to weep for her.

I was very fortunate: I had both my parents until I was sixteen and my mother lived through to her late eighties. My Dad was very much a father-figure and I was still my Mum's "baby" even when she herself needed cajoling to eat and support to get to the bathroom. Whatever the political, social or even geographical distances between my only sister and myself, we are bound together as "family" due to my parents' devotion to each other and to us.

Sociologists will tell you that, in human terms, a family is basically a group of people linked by consanguinity, affinity or even co-residence. In many societies, it's the principle institution for the socialisation of children. Cloning aside, we are unable to choose our families as we do our friends: close ties formed voluntarily and independently can often prove stronger than blood. However, when affinities are cultivated within domestic familiarity but without Nature's biological safeguarding, the picture can sometimes become very distorted. Today, there is an apparent disintegration of the traditionally structured family: due to the devaluation of marriage and longterm, formal partnerships, the kind of procreational vagrancy that seems to permeate some sectors of society, and the horribly premature sexualisation of children. Tia's grandmother was pregnant with Tia's mother when she was only two years older than the tragic schoolgirl at the time of her death. When I was 14, I was dreaming about ballet and still plaiting my hair everyday.

Recent research in the United States has estimated that from the year 2000, there would be more "step-families" across America than traditional nuclear ones; one in every three Americans would have step siblings or parents. I have no wish to offend anyone whose family is comprised of "step" or "half" relatives; I have several friends in such situations where the well being of all the children is paramount and where love and respect are natural perimeters. Yet it's alien for me to grasp how Tia's mother could accept her own ex-partner, the now-accused Stuart Hazell, as her current step-dad; or indeed for Tia to suddenly view her mother's former partner as her new step-grandfather. One of my friends recently explained to her son that they were going to meet his "new Daddy", to which he smartly replied: "How did he get to be my Daddy without me knowing anything about it?"

I recently asked a Catholic priest if I should invite some people who were in need stay in my home, knowing that they would be unlikely to respect my privacy and property or the sacredness of my late parents' things. I admit that I was devastated when he suggested this was the ideal, God-given opportunity to throw open my front door as well as my heart. I was relieved when another priest, who I consider to be a friend, advised that it wasn't uncharitable to protect my home if I felt at all unsafe. God doesn't want us to be capricious about who we invite into our homes or our hearts. He bids us to respect and cherish the precious gifts He's given us, to keep them safe; nothing can be more precious than the innocence of a child.

"Innocence is lucky if it finds the same protection as guilt."

(Francois  de La Rochefoucauld)

 

God Bless Tia.

Looking and Leaping...

It's long been my own opinion that if your heart leaps, you should follow it...

“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.” 

(John O'Donohue)

 

...have a blessed landing.