BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

Most of you know that Judy and I are voracious readers.  We generally read a couple of books a week, and as we are reading, we often share with each other what we think are memorable passages from the books.  Judy is reading one this week called The Secret Life of Bees.  It’s on the NY Times Bestseller list, and was selected by Good Morning America to be on their “READ THIS!” list. 

The book is set in SC in 1964, and it tells the story of Lily Owens.  After Lily’s mother is killed, she is taken in by a strange trio of bee-keeping sisters, May, June, and August, and Lily is introduced to the mesmerizing world of bees and honey.  The core of the story is Lily’s search for a mother, and she finds one in a place she never expected.

I want to share with you the passage that Judy thought was so powerful.  Here goes:

          Though I’d done bee patrol with Zach, I hadn’t been back to the hives with August since that first time.  I pulled on long cotton pants that used to be June’s, and then August’s white shirt, which needed the sleeves rolled up about ten turns.  Then I placed the jungle helmet on my head, letting the veil fall down over my face.

            We walked to the woods beside the pink house with her stories still pulled soft around our shoulders.  I could feel them touching me in places, like an actual shawl.

            “There’s one thing I don’t get,” I said.

            “What’s that?”

            “How come if your favorite color is blue, you painted your house so pink?”

            She laughed.  “That was May’s doing.  She was with me the day I went to the paint store to pick out the color.  I had a nice tan color in mind, but May latched onto this sample called Caribbean pink.  She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish flamenco.  I thought, “Well, this is about the tackiest color I’ve ever seen, and we’ll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May’s heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it.”

            “All this time I just figured you liked pink,” I said.

            She laughed again.  “You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily.  Like the color of a house.  How big is that in the overall scheme of life?  But lifting a person’s heart, now THAT matters.  The whole problem with people is —”

            “They don’t know what matters and what doesn’t,” I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.”

            “I was gonna say, The problem is they KNOW what matters, but they don’t choose it.  You know how hard that is, Lily?  I love May, but it was still so hard to choose that Caribbean Pink.  The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.”

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday