how beautiful, how kind

Posted by Ellen Grace Olinger in Art, Beauty, Encouragement, Faith, Generations Of Faith, Grace, Gratitude, Grief, Grief And Acceptance, Hope, Love, National Poetry Month, Nature, Poems For Nursing Homes, Poetry, Reading and tagged with , , ,

reading poety
and watching
a vase of flowers
change
how beautiful
the fading
pink roses

I think of the hidden treasures in the caregiving years with my mother, now over nine years in the past.  There is a beauty, I feel, that is only from the heart.   The soul.   It keeps growing – even past the mind and health, and certainly way past how our culture may define beauty (definitions I do not accept).  Karl and I also volunteered in a nursing home for 3 years, and I saw the fruit of many lives of faithfulness and love.

There are deep mysteries to the soul.  My mother was in her 60s when my father died in March, in 1983.  She was teaching full-time, and took a bus to visit my father in the hospital after classes.  I was in the first year of my doctoral program in education at Northern Illinois University.  My father wrote to me once a week, and I saved his letters.  I was an over-achiever but needed incompletes in my courses that semester.  I went to my mother’s and did my homework in my father’s workshop.  I completed my degree, in part to honor my father.  I took 5 years to complete a program that could have been finished in 3 years.  That’s okay.

I still remember the kindness of many people – not their work, not their publications, but that they were good to me.

The vintage swans are from Reusableart.com.  There’s a Swan Boulevard in my mother’s old neighborhood.

swans-08

13 Responses

  4. Hi Ellen, thanks for stopping by my blog. I looked thru some of your posts and had a difficult time finding places to reply – one had no reply section, in the other, the reply section was closed. I finally know what acrostic means! Did you get a chance to see any of my Ekphrastica posts? I think I may play with acrostics as well, see what happens.

    • You are welcome. My comments on this blog are set up to close automatically after 14 days for each post, but the “like” option is always there. Thanks so much for your note, and I’ll look for the posts you mention. Blessings, Ellen

  5. Lovely flowers, verse and swan illustration. Beautiful and kind shines through in your post. I too think it is extraordinary how the soul grows. You were privileged to have the caring experiences with your mother and in the nursing home.

  7. Ellen, its always like that , isn’t it? The kindness of small things, a gesture, a thoughtful word – always means so much – thank you for your beautiful words and kindness to me. Sending friendship and love your way this evening – K

  9. Thank you for sharing this, Ellen. When we’re in graduate school, nothing seems more important, but I love how you say it took 5 years to finish instead of 3, but that’s all right.
    Nothing is more important than being there, meeting each day as it comes, and spending precious time with those we love.
    The is beautiful.

  10. Lovely lilies in your header, Ellen. So pure, so white. I have a hard time parting with flowers, they are way beyond beautiful by the time they are tossed. Swans are so elegant.

  12. It’s both a mystery and a fact that I know my parents better now than I did when they were alive. I think that’s often because we’re so busy living at the time, there’s little opportunity for reflection. And of course, a completed life can be seen as a whole – the experiences we’ve seen only as pieces and fragments begin to make sense.

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