FLOWER FRIDAY

The garden is looking good after a week of heavy rain and high winds, but also some sunshine.  I was up early this morning, so wandered around before 7.00 a.m. - in my pink robe - enjoying the sights and scents of the garden and listening to the birds singing. 

It is still very windy but I am delighted that this beautiful rose, given to us by two dear friends, Angie and Pete, when we were baptised in 2001, is blooming because we moved it a couple of years ago and last year it didn’t do very well.

However, this rose is proof that if something is nurtured and looked after, it pays dividends in time, if you are patient.

Not being a “political animal” I don’t want to use Blip or my Facebook page to make any comment about what is happening in the UK at the moment, but the name of the rose is Compassion!

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, 
     to enter into the places of pain, 
          to share in brokenness, 
               fear, confusion, and anguish. 
Compassion challenges us to cry out 
     with those in misery, 
          to mourn with those who are lonely, 
               to weep with those in tears. 
Compassion requires us 
     to be weak with the weak, 
          vulnerable with the vulnerable, 
               and powerless with the powerless. 
Compassion means full immersion 
     in the condition of being human.” 
Henri J.M. Nouwen