Quicklinks:
|
Great Writing - Home > Extended > The Polish Connection - Chapter 25
| READING ROOM | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| COMMUNITY | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
| ABOUT GREAT WRITING | ||
|---|---|---|
|
| WORK AWAITING REVIEW |
|---|
|
| GW IS... |
|---|
|
Great Writing creative writing community is designed to prompt ideas
and provide inspiration and motivation within aspiring and amateur
authors. Whatever your topic; from love poetry to Doctor Who or Harry
Potter fan fiction, Great Writing's online writing group is where you
can make new friends and improve your creative writing. |
| WHO'S ONLINE |
|---|
| We have 2040 guests online and 7 members online |
Extended Work
| print friendly version | |
| The Polish Connection - Chapter 25 | |
| By jean.day | ||||||
| 21 October 2006 | ||||||
|
After being inspired while playing bridge yesterday afternoon, I add a lot to the last chapter. May - June 1917 I have had my first letter from Jo. She writes just as she talks – all aflutter and rather skipping around. She starts by thanking me for my help when she was visiting here. She went on about how she loved this area and how her best friend, Dorothy, says that she looks ever so healthy after being here. Apparently Dorothy had ridden her bike over to visit with Jo and Adelaide. (I get the impression that Dorothy is really best friends with Adelaide and that Jo resents it somewhat.) She mentions that she and her sister were gardening, and clipping lawn borders and their brother was mowing. She says, “We all had a jolly chat in the drawing room. Dorothy got reciting poetry. So enjoyed the evening.” She obviously is quite keen on one of Dorothy’s brothers called Cyril who is a subaltern in the Royal Artillery and posted to France, as she spent much of the letter talking about him and his letters. Another of Dorothy’s family, her sister Edie, is a nurse at a children’s hospital in Margate. She quoted a letter they had received from her about an air raid. “Besides the terrible air raid on London when about 41 were killed and 400 injured in the East End, Edie says four German aeroplanes visited Margate. No one killed or injured as far as I have heard; some houses smashed about, the water mains damaged in one place, one bomb dropped uncomfortably close to the building where there is ammunition stored. Lucky for us they didn’t quite hit it. I was doing a round with the doctor when the first explosion came but didn’t take much notice of it at first then another came and we made for the verandah to get the beds in. Guns were banging away and bombs dropping every minute and I expected one to land in the middle of us before we could get the children in. One shell from our own guns went over the hospital and landed on the cliff opposite. Then we heard firing in the distance for some time. Poor London has caught it pretty hot.” We learned this week that three peasant children in Fatima in Portugal say that they have seen the Virgin Mary above a holm oak tree. Nobody believes the children, so we shall have to see if they see her again, and a miracle can be proven. It is very exciting to think that we are actually living in a time when the Virgin might again be seen. Our Pope, Benedict XV, has made repeated but forlorn pleas for peace, and finally he made a direct appeal to Mary to intercede for peace in the world. The church are now saying that God’s response was Mary’s first appearance at Fatima just over a week later. Fatima is just a small village about seventy miles north of Lisbon; the three children to whom she appeared were Lucia dos Santos, aged ten, and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, brother and sister, aged eight and seven respectively. However, I have been reading about it and the paper says it was in the spring of last year that the children say they had their first joint supernatural encounter. As they were looking after the sheep one day they saw a dazzlingly beautiful young man, seemingly made of light, who told them he was the Angel of Peace; and he invited them to pray with him. And then twice more they saw him. The children did not tell anyone about these visits of the Angel, thinking they wouldn’t be believed. Then on the 13th of May the three children took their flocks out to pasture on the small area known as the Cova da Iria. After lunch and the rosary they suddenly saw a bright flash of something like lightning, followed quickly by another flash in the clear blue sky. They looked up to see in Lucia’s words, “A lady, clothed in white, brighter than the sun, radiating a light more clear and intense than a crystal cup filled with sparkling water, lit by burning sunlight.” The children stood there amazed, bathed in the light that surrounded the apparition, as the Lady smiled and said: “Do not be afraid, I will not harm you.” Lucia as the oldest asked her where she came from. The Lady pointed to the sky and said: “I come from heaven.” Lucia then asked her what she wanted: “I have come to ask you to come here for six months on the 13th day of the month, at this same hour. Later I shall say who I am and what I desire. And I shall return here yet a seventh time.” The Lady finished with a request: “Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and the end of the war.” With that she began to rise into the air, moving towards the east until she disappeared. The children got together and tried to think of ways they could make sacrifices, as the Lady had asked, resolving to go without lunch and to pray the full rosary. Francisco and Jacinta received more support from their parents than Lucia, but the attitude of the local inhabitants was skeptical and even derisory; the children had much to suffer, just as the Lady had told them. I would like to believe it, but it all sounds so very odd. I will have to wait until I hear more and then make up my mind. However, I looked out my rosary, and will make an attempt to say it more often. I do find it boring and repetitious however. On May 18th the American president was given powers of conscription, and it will be started on June 5th. We do need the Americans in this war. I had a letter back from John, commenting on my enthusiasm over the Fatima visitation. He says that he greatly distrusts any vision that talks about bright lights. Apparently, this year of 1917 is predicted as being one with many occurrences of sun spots, and that people often describe the effects of the sun spots as very bright lights which shoot out. So he said, if there are any future visits by Mary, take note of whether they coincide with unusual sun activity. I think I will ask Peter when I next write to him to get the consensus of opinion of his friends at the camp about the visitations.
Only registered users can rate and write comments. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
||||||
 Previous item
|
Next item
|
|---|