Choices

Strange that an older retired woman in Assisted Living still has decisions and choices to make in an ordinary day.
Our activity lady needs all the help she can get and is also - shall I say - Bible-minded. She has worked miracles with young people and undertaken to accept others into her home.
She has chosen to ask a team of lovely, Bible College students to come to Carrington to call out Bingo games, decorate rooms for seasonal holidays and even do some detailed cleaning like between the banister railings.
Today she asked people at their dining tables if they'd like to chat with these youngsters. As some were the same ones who come to my door to hear about writing and my life, I said "Okay". So two young ladies sat with me and we talked away. They intend to be and are being trained to be - modern day missionaries. Helping the poor in undeveloped countries.
But I don't believe we should have missionaries. Do I tell them that?
That's when choices come in.
So I bring in the fact that the world is always in a state of war somewhere or the other and it's all because of religions. I tell them the story of the Catholic convent in Hong Kong and how our family was condemned to hell unless we changed from Church of England to be Catholics - according to their religion. And I told them about the Reverend Mother saying she would give me the Cinderella ball gown that I wore in the play but only if I became a Catholic. I was fourteen at the time.
And I remembered the Nuns going out at night to pick up girl babies left in the gutters. Did these little ones end up having a good life? Or would it have been better to let them die?


Who knows if we make good choices? And what if we choose to be completely honest and by doing so, we hurt others?


In Mandela's story he wrestles with the question. Is it right to devote yourself to freedom of your country yet by doing so you are avoiding the greatest thing you can do on earth which is to look after your family? One has to be sacrificed for the other, you cannot do both. Choices.


And that is the way it was today. signed Quandary-prone Doris