‘Would you like a scone’, I asked Joan as we walked down the steps from our Church. My friend Pauline gifted me some of her home-made delicious scones. A miracle if Joan would say yes, I waited with bated breath. ‘Yes’, she replied and we began walking to my home. Joan is more true to herself than anyone I know, fiercely independent, truly genuine lady. Caring little for material gain, she dresses in her own inimitable style, walking her own road, bohemian, individual. One time when I told her that her smile was like the sun, she replied smiling: ‘Oh be quiet will you’.
As we talked about our lives, she was completely taken aback when she learned that I am an exceedingly grateful to God widow, blessed with four caring sons and three delightful grandchildren; ‘I always thought you were a retired cheerful single lady always stuck in the Church. I had no idea you had all that stuff’, she said, looking at me with new eyes, a place of deep encounter. ‘I thought you must have lived a very pleasant easy life. I had no idea’.
‘Joy, the gigantic secret of the Christian’. (G.K. Chesterton)
Walking away from my door, scone in hand, she looks back, stands for a moment and repeats; ‘I had no idea’, like something in our sweet encounter resonated in her deepest heart.
Kindness like snow beautifies everything. Headway made in our fledgling friendship, all thanks to that tempting scone from kindly Pauline. Trust emerging, new horizons opening up, God’s Amazing Grace. We never give without receiving, that’s the Trinitarian principle.
‘Let every action of mine be something beautiful for God’. (St. Mother Teresa)
Finally, today, 4/11/2021, Joan and I sat and chatted over hot coffee. Long time coming and so well worth the wait. ‘I thought you were joking’, she said, re my invitation. Right there, her meek words spoke volumes. Leo Tolstoy was ‘bang on’, when he wrote: ‘Real goodness is always simple. Simplicity is so attractive and so profitable that it is strange that so few people are really simple’.💎
‘Jesus said: “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just’. (Luke 14:12-15)
Christmas dinner in Camo’s. 17th December 2021.
Joan, Sheila and I in Kells. 🎆
Joan and I, September 2022.🌸
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