“Celebrating the End Of Our Gentle Healing Journey” from Susan Telford

The doorbell rang and my husband (who is off work sick, ?COVID) answered the door.

“Ooh this interesting”, he says as he brings the brown paper clad box to me in the living room.

“Handle with Gentleness” is hand written on the front of the parcel – I turn the box around and see it has been sent by Florence in Greece.

The parcel is so well wrapped it takes long moments before I see the contents.

First, the beautiful red box inside

“A rose is a rose is a rose”

The rose, the symbol of Love, the symbol that is so precious to me, the wisdom that came in an early poem:

I prayed

“Make me a vessel of the Divine.”

God laughed.

“That is like the rose asking me to make it a flower.”

Does the rose need my assistance to become a flower?

Which good works must it do to attain flowerhood?

All the rose can do is bloom,

at its appointed hour

Unashamed to be a rose

unafraid to show her beauty.

Being only what she is.

You want to be a vessel of my love?

You are already that.

Now, bloom where you are planted

Be the variety of rose

Only you can be

In your garden,

among the other flowers.

Some will show their thorns

They are as beloved

As those who perfume the world.

Stop looking outside yourself

Stop striving

The end of suffering is here

Closer than your breath

Will you give up all worlds

But this, appearing now?

Give up the search

Give up your longing

Be a rose.

I feel such joy as I lift the lid of the box – knowing that inside there is our Gentle Healing book, wondering what else is contained in this too-big-for-just-a-book box – feeling the Love as I lift the lid……

A beautiful package of love with the red rose at the centre – filled with goodies – a rose filled box of pure Love.

I open each precious package slowly, using all my senses, popping the bubble wrap, sniffing the rose scent that pervades the box, looking at everything, tasting the sweeties, sugar dusting my legs as I open one box of candy, sharing titbits with my husband as he watches my face – knowing how wee scared Susie has felt so unloved – seeing in real time the Gentle Healing that has occurred in my life (and in his) over these last few years.

And then seeing the drawing with all our names on

Putting it in a frame to sit on my shelf of treasures

And then the book!!!

I had seen the full pdf in glorious colour on my laptop, but nothing prepared me to hold this work of art in my hand

Flicking through the pages, I feel filled up with the love that brought us together, the Wisdom that wrote the words, painted the pictures, edited and designed the book, that does all things magnificently through us, its willing vessels : the empty shells of Love, the Roses, blooming where we are planted.

I thank each one of you for the unique way you embody Love in the world, for the way you show Love to me.

I can never express what you mean to me, but I know you know.