Happy Easter to Everyone!

My wife loves it that I buy flowers for her regularly, her bouquet for Easter is always something special. Our florist has done her proud. More than that, when I collected the flowers yesterday evening the florist had made me a buttonhole to wear to church for the Easter Sunday Service. Treating me to her disarming smile she said that it was a thank you for my continued regular business. She made my day.
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Beautiful flowers, but if I bought them for Mrs.L, she'd think I was feeling guilty about something.

We don't celebrate Easter and I think many peoples' idea of celebrating is to get on a holiday flight to Spain, Portugal of some other 'exotic' destination.
 
Beautiful flowers, but if I bought them for Mrs.L, she'd think I was feeling guilty about something.
Early in our marriage I wanted to say a thank you to my lovely lady so I had a bouquet made that was reminiscent of her wedding flowers, she was delighted. After that she's had a bouquet every week for almost 56 years.
It's a thank you for her picking up the domestic chores that we should share. In her working life she was a paramedic, a career in the ambulance service meant round the clock shifts so she always had the time at home to clean and cook, which she did without complaining. She is just the best wife ever, how I love her! I wear my wedding ring with pride.
 
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I was fortunate to see Michelangelo's "Pietà" at the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows NYC on display in the Vatican Pavilion. I was very young but it really struck me. It was magnificent.

An excerpt below from The New York Times — April 14, 1964 > The ‘Pieta’ Arrives Here, Ever So Gently; Michelangelo Statue Lifted From Liner for Trip to Fair (Published 1964)

"Michelangelo's masterwork in marble, the 'Pietà,' arrived in New York yesterday, the first time it has left the Vatican since the sculptor smuggled it into St. Peter's in a horsedrawn cart 465 years ago.

The sculptor's poignant depiction of the frail body of Jesus in death, cradled in the arms of His mother, will be put on display in the Vatican Pávilion at the World's Fair.

Fearful that the slightest jar might split the aged marble of the massive work, shippers had packed the 'Pietà' in a watertight case inside of a case inside of another case.

Even if the Italian Line's Cristoforo Colombo—the ship that carried the masterpiece from Italy—had sunk, the container would have floated. The top of the container was painted a bright orange, so it could be spotted easily.

And even if the container. through some mischance, had sunk 10 feet below the surface, electronic equipment within the case would have radioed the 'Pietà's' position.

No margin had been left for error. The buoyant cushioning material inside the cases was considered sufficient to protect‐the 'Pietà' even if a cable had parted on the crane that lifted the crate from the deck of the Cristoforo Colombo yesterday to the deck of the barge Challenger.

All of this care was in sharp contrast with the night when Michelangelo and his friends, fearful that Pope Alexander VI might refuse permission for installation of the statue in St. Peter's, made their surreptitious entrance into the Vatican, the 'Pietà' bedded in straw and covered by old blankets.

Columbus was a contemporary of Michelangelo. But the explorer never got the welcome that the 'Pietà' did when he arrived in the New World."
 
EASTER BLESSINGS
"On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry -- old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling -- and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.
We don't realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren't put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously.
May the spirit and light of this Easter morning and the special spirit and light of this abbey at Corcomroe bless us all, watch over us and protect us on our journey, open us from the darkness into the light of peace and hope and transfiguration."
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey
Excerpt from his books: Walking in Wonder (US/UK) / Walking on the Pastures of Wonder (Ireland)
https://johnodonohue.com/
 

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