Musing….
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the
selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more
joy you can contain.” - Kahil Gibran
Charise’s Turn:
While visiting
my daughter in Denver, we walked by an extraordinarily welcoming front yard –
terraced with blooming plants, painted rocks, pinwheels, figurines, and a large
banner with the words “Welcome Friends”.
This is a children’s garden, a memorial garden “created to honor the
lives of all children everywhere cut off from childhood at an early age. May
you feel the love they had for life in every flower and where the flower blooms
no more, remember the bloom it once held” (quoted from the largest painted rock).
Two women tend this garden, the mother and grandmother of Shelby, the child
they lost to cancer.
Shelby’s
grandmother sits on the front porch and shares stories of passersby who have
stopped, and one who asked for a rock to be added in honor of a loved one. What
impresses me is how this single family brings acceptance of loss and the transformative
power of love out into the open–– into community, with nature and whimsy. To
stand at this garden is to see the smiles of children.
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the
moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a
cathedral.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Get Fired Up:
We all have
experiences that stay in the dark of our existence. What can you bring out into
the open to behold?
