Mattye

“Soeur Marie Emelie"

Soeur Marie Emelie
is little and very old:
her eyes are onyx,
and her cheeks vermilion,
her apron wide and kind
and cobalt blue.

She comforts
generations and generations
of children,
who are
"new"
at the convent school.
When they are eight,
they are already up to her shoulder,
they grow up and go into the world,
she remains,
forever,
always incredibly old,
but incredibly never older...
She has an affinity with the hens,
When a hen dies,she sits down on a bench and cries,
she is the only grown-up, whose tears
are not frightening tears.
Children can weep without shame,
at her side...
Soeur Marie Emelie...
her apron as wide and kind
as skies on a summer day
and as clean and blue.”
― Caryll Houselander, Flowering Tree

“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”
― St. Therese of Lisieux

“Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another.”
― Caryll Houselander, This War Is the Passion

“Most people know the sheer wonder that goes with falling in love, how not only does everything in heaven and earth become new, but the lover himself becomes new. It is literally like the sap rising in the tree, putting forth new green shoots of life.”
― Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God