Rapture - NOT the event that didn't happen last week. Musing on pleasure.

Dictionary definition of rapture (leaving aside the one relating to ascent into heaven) is "feeling of intense pleasure."

Thought about this while WTD up and down and up and down the garden today - productive clearing of shrubs killed by winter frosts and over enthusiastic weeds etc. And came to this conclusion in list form: Rapture is ...

watching a newborn lamb take its first wobbly steps
the first strawberry of the season (the one that the field mice didn't get)
taking in the view from the peak of the mountain you have just climbed (particularly if the mountain is in Argyllshire and the heather is in bloom)
holding your child for the first time
sharing wine and good food with friends (see Recipe for a Happy Sunday, below)
hearing the first performance of your son's composition for piano and choir (last night ... beautiful)
crying throughout Les Mis (impossible to be unmoved by Bring Him Home)
immersion in awesome, life affirming music: the opening section of Zadok the Priest; Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis; Fix You by Cold Play; Greatest Day by Take That; There You'll Be from Pearl Harbor; the whole of Les Mis; the Annie Lennox song from Lord Of the Rings and much, much more. Tingle-factor music all.
a "tight squeeze" from youngest child, little arms wrapped around your neck and a hot, breathy whisper in your ear, "I love you, Mummy."
escaping into a good book. My favourites: Revolution, Jennifer Donnelly; Random Acts of Heroic Love, Danny Scheinnman; Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon; Blackberry Wine, Joanne Harris; The Map of Love, Ahdaf Soueif; Kim, Rudyard Kipling; and The Davinci Seal, Theresa Breslin.

But more than all of these, in my world rapture is hearing children laugh - that delicious, infectious sound of genuine, roiling, burbling joy.

Have a good weekend. I'll be back in the garden tomorrow, with my four legged (un-)helper.

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Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

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Walking The Dog

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