faith.

I knew a lady.  She was four feet, ten inches tall, 90 pounds, 98 years old, and completely blind, with such severe arthritis her bones creaked painfully as she would struggle to stand up from her chair.  But every day I saw her navigating her dark world with serenity, courage, and love, faithfully calling old friends, graciously welcoming new ones, and chuckling when someone complimented her hair because she hadn’t seen it for years. 

She often dreamed she was walking in the woods picking armfuls of wild flowers.  

I asked her once what she thought of God.  In response she turned her deeply wrinkled face and empty eyes toward me, and said…

“I never saw the moor

I never saw the sea

Yet I know how the heather looks

Or how a wave must be.

I never talked with God

Or visited in heaven

Yet certain am I of that spot

As though a chart were given.”

(~Edna St. Vincent Millay)

~ by Eva on August 3, 2008.