faith

I am looking for my post from last year for f and it looks like I skipped f! Oh, woe is me! I thought I had completed the A to Z Challenge!

F for faith. Faith is one of the Seven Heavenly Virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude, faith, hope and charity. This is a different list from one that was written later to match and oppose the Seven Sins: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Both lists have charity and temperance in common, but the rest differ. Which list appeals to you most? If we combine them then we have 12 virtues.

I chose the 7 Sins last year as a theme to write about emotions. We don’t use the virtues as emotions as much. Who says “I am feeling diligent, temperant, just?”

And for faith, I walked two days ago. This tree was just starting to bud out: faith that spring will return, hope will return, justice will return, love will return, after the winter, after the war, after death and darkness and loss. Faith is spring and buds and flowers and the new green hope and joy.

ardor

“the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra, la!”

I walk uptown today in the sun and the birds and I are out in the sun. It is warm and just amazing. There are flowers everywhere. Arriving home I change to bike gear and then it’s cloudy again. I change out and here is the sun. I will do the A to Z after all, because I am posting daily anyhow and the alphabet trickles round my thoughts. A, a day, a day late, arduous or ardor?

The birds and I are
slain by the sun: welcome
ardor spring flowers

My topic is Virtues and Views….there are Seven Virtues just as there are Seven Sins. Last year I wrote about a different feeling each day. Are the virtues feelings? And there is more than one list of virtues….

 

 

Under the camillia

My mother had many of her copies of Louisa May Alcott’s books, including the odd moral fairy tales. One is Under the Lilacs. I loved slipping into that world that was quite different from my own, in so many small details.

Thursday I was coughing and had no voice. I cancelled clinic and lay on the couch. In the warmest part of the day I lay bundled in the sun, under the camillia.