Remembering different times at the mission school continued.

To learn patience, reverence, humility and have time to pray.  So teach me.

Sandy

By the back door of the mission house where the fly screen banged shut and squeaked to open was our drinking water. It was harvested rain water.  Large jugs of it were brought in boiled then cooled in the fridge. The used metal tumblers were  shaped and full of character, their dents when cold, fitted hands well.  The bathroom taps had brown water running from them. That water came from the dam which was often low and because Rowland, my older cousin, had a motorbike we did try to see it.  I remember the bike needed to be pushed through the sand for a bit and what we saw was more of a heat haze than any water.

Also near the back door Gramps had an orphan monkey he was taking care of.   One day when I arrived at the house the monkey had gone and there was a crepe bandage sticking out from under Gramps’ shorts.  The monkey had bitten the soft inside flesh of his thigh!   I am glad he took the monkey to a troop in the hills.

We never used the front door and it was at the back door you looked out onto an enormous tree ( I think it was a syringa berrytree) You could climb up a shed and then the tree and use a zip wire to get a flashandscream look at the back garden.  I remember my hands sweaty and hot from climbing then holding tightly to the sun baked pipe as it slid, the wire and gradient zapping it along. 

Yes, this all happened at the back door! Memories of a different life when I was thirteen going on fourteen .

Town was a long way away in thought. Only a necessity when things went wrong.

Ps..My Gran lived with this aunt until she died at 93 years of age.  My grandparents on both sides lived with their children once they retired.

Some quotes on reverence:

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

John Milton ( English poet  born 1608- 1674 known for his epic poem Paradise Lost )

When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us.  The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.

John O’Donohue (1956-2008 Irish author, poet and priest.)

Where there is reverence there is fear, but where there is not reverence everywhere there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

Socrates (399 BC Greek philosopher from Athens )

Thank you for reading my post. I hope you are well.

Sandy😊