We carry light within us. God created us as light bearers. A precious friend of mine, shared with me yesterday a letter she received from an acquaintance a few months back. It is one of the most beautiful letters I have ever read. Not only is it beautifully written, but it settles in my heart, when I read it, that my life, our lives hold the ability to change and leave hope, faith and love - God - in people's lives. We are light bearers.
My friend has given me permission to post the letter. I hope it inspires you as it did me.
So, there is a question that remains unanswered: Is it the influence of a scary blend of various alcoholic beverages that made me think - and even worse dared me to say - that you made me think to my late grandmother, who'd never been out of Belgium, had 9 children and who was well in her 70s when I first met her ? As a matter of fact, I was pretty puzzled by you, like when you see someone in a tram who reminds you of someone, and you desperately try to find out who. And thanks to a kind of divine inspiration certainly triggered by the awesome beer Paul-Olivier was so kind to share with me, it just popped up. You are the first person I've met who reminds me of my grandmother. A true miracle which I wouldn't even have seen if it was
not for that sudden touch of inspiration.
So who was she? If you open the official Belgian census book, you'd see that Marie Baes, born Van Waes in 1907 in Flanders, died in 1996 and was the widow of a Flemish farmer whom she married at 30 years old - already very late for that time, had 4 daughters and 5 sons, and lived on her own in a wing of her 5th born's farm. She spent her days gardening, reading and occasionally cooking amazing soups and pies for huge family gatherings.
A closer look at her, a tiny old woman with impeccably neat hair and shiny eyes, and you feel behind her apparent quietness the tremendous restlessness of someone who carried 9 children while cooking everyday meals for 12+ people, milking cows and gardening while listening avidly to some high-level political debates at the radio. Even after her husband died - my father was then 18 - and albeit she'd never been rich, she sent two of her sons to the University. Probably because she never had the opportunity to study and she could appreciate what a solid education means.
Well, all that is fine, but far to be sufficient - even unnecessary - to understand who she really was. Everything in her resonated with a calm and joyful serenity. She was not a person with spectacular outbursts of wisdom like some kind of frightening wizard, but a kind of discrete love of life that impregnated everything she would lay her eyes on. Nothing human, including the worst sides of the worst persons, was strange to her, as everything would fit in her eyes in
the infinitely complex and infinitely beautiful canvas she thought life is, the world as seen through the eyes of God. I am sure the deep roots f her serenity came from her strong faith in God. Not the God that's debated in abstract intellectual constructions, but rather a source of universal love that's hidden sometimes really deep in everyone and that makes us human. I am sure she felt It rather than understood it, because it can't be understood. I had the sudden feeling that you also have this immediate bound with Him (or Her, who knows?), just from the very similar way you look at people. Maybe not so mature as her - you'll have over 50 years to see more of the world for that. Yes, I am afraid you're the only person I know - except from my late grandmother - who has "It". And it took me a Westvleteren to put a word on it.
God bless Belgian beers.
And bless you too, although you already are.
Love + people + food + table = happiness
