Listening

Saturday 8th January

Day 262

While my husband walks by the river in the sunshine I sit with some dear friends in a big listening circle under the vaulted wooden ceiling of the Quaker Meeting House. I know most of these precious faces and that of the man who is talking to us. The walls of my chest hurt but only if I think about it. Sometimes I look up and see a sheet of blue silk sky framed in the high arch of the window opposite me. The words of the teacher fall on me like my favourite Beethoven Symphony - The Ninth - achingly familiar but new and rousing every time - lifting my spirits, cracking open my heart.