Four Beautiful Things

It was a Sunday, a time to kick-back a little and rest. So we had a hot drink in the Burgess Park café and afterwards decided to stroll around the adjacent Chumleigh Gardens. These were created in 1995 to reflect the area’s diversity. So it has Mediterranean, Islamic, African, Oriental and English themed gardens set around the old Female Friendly Asylum alms houses.

During the walk we saw four beautiful things.

The First

A tall, thin older man sat on one of the metal patio chairs and finishes his supermarket pasta salad. He had relocated the chair right up in the corner of the wall so as to catch fully the mid afternoon sun. Probably a man of Caribbean heritage, he finishes his lunch and plugs in his ear phones to listen to the radio. He settles in his chair and closes his eyes. He seems tired, as if this was the only opportunity to rest given he had worked long hours with heavy lifting all week. Now in this pocket of sunshine he was safe to close his eyes and rest – so he did.

The Second

Not twelve feet away from the resting man an older woman sits at a metal table with a little girl. Grandma has gently split open a bag of popcorn so they can share, pick and chew together. As they share the popcorn the little girl chatters, maybe telling Grandma a wonderful story or asking her a question, perhaps she was sharing a joke she had heard at school. I notice that Grandma has total attention on her grand-daughter her arm is around the little girl’s chair. She talks softly to the girl, quietly, reassuringly, maybe sharing wisdom and the wonders of life. It was a quiet communion of love and gentleness, with popcorn.

The Third

We walk out into a wider space. A group of twelve teenagers of Bolivian heritage are devising a dance routine to music played on a CD. Adolescent boys and girls, clap, twist and turn. They move in time with the music laughing and singing until one reaches to stop the music to suggest another move. They practice the new movement and the music returns. Next week is the fifteenth birthday of one of the girls in the group and the youngsters intend to do the dance routine at the birthday party.

Two mothers sit on the wall to chaperone but mainly to provide the fried chicken which the young people are now joyfully devouring in that hungry way teenagers always are. As they laugh they have no idea that this is, for them, the very best and richest of life.

The Fourth

We move to the car park where we are arrested by an avenue of maple trees, yellow in the now late afternoon sun. The trees dazzle us and fill the air with gold and the smell of musk. A carpet of leaves under the trees seem as if gold-leaf has been set down for absolutely no other reason other than it is beautiful. It is the break down of the green pigment chlorophyll revealing the yellow and orange pigments called carotenoids. But they are also the burning bushes, a portal of glory, God’s Grandeur, a moment of wonder, they are the trees of life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

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We gather some leaves to take home and in some inner way feel healed by the simply beautiful around us.

WHY NOT RESPOND TO THE ABOVE BY WRITING IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW SOMETHING SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL YOU HAVE RESENTLY SEEN.