Jigsaw heart of kindness

A surprise package landed on the doormat this morning - and rather appropriately for Random Acts of Kindness Day, it contained a lovely hand-made heart, born of kindness!

A side-effect of being of the Sacred Heart is that I tend to notice hearts and heart shapes, wherever and however they may be. And sure enough, on Saturday, as I was zooming with the group of religious with whom I meet regularly, I noticed and commented on an interesting heart hanging behind one sister. She'd made it as an experiment; sometime after our zoom she decided to make another one, now hanging on my wall.

It's a heart made with kindness, containing so much! I can see flowers and fruit, sunshine and shadow; autumn leaves, frost and a glimpse of water. Tipping it side to side and peering intently, I can see a bit of a building and what could be people - of course! Seen or unseen, a heart has to contain people! And in a displacement capable of the widest, most generous of hearts, I see a jigsaw's normal order cast aside: borders facing outwards, with plenty of gaps between them, and centre pieces on the margins. 

And being a heart, it contains all the seasons of nature, reflected in our lives and emotions: hope and promise; flowering and fruition; autumn's gold and glorious relinquishment; harsh cold, starkness and death, concealing within it the seeds of new life. Life's cycle, all jumbled together, as our lives and emotions so often are; jumbled together, and, kaleidoscope-like, creating something uniquely lovely.

And of course, I see kindness and friendship, creativity and imagination .

That's what I can see. What about you?