A friend gifts you this string of Tibetan prayer flags for your birthday. A most thoughtful gift, you are moved. It is now hanging on the window above the dining table, though it is supposed to be hung in a big open space, in the wind etc etc. But you don't have a space like that.
At that table, you have served and fed so many good friends, and people from so many countries, people you hardly knew - people of so many temperaments and talents and various kinds of niceness and strangenesses. Much great conversation and affection and laughter and sorrow has been shared across that space. Many children have spilt curry on it, many toasts have been raised, and many broken hearts mended with listening and hot food.
It is in all rightness that the prayer flags hang behind it like a blessing.
".....We should be careful of each other, we should be kind, while there is still time." Philip Larkin
No comments:
Post a Comment