I
THE PENSION OF THE PATCHWORK QUILT
I
THE PENSION OF THE PATCHWORK QUILT
So much more than you would ever dream lies hidden behind the beauty of “The Blue Bird,” by Maurice Maeterlinck. Beauty may be the first of its qualities. By the same token, beauty may be the last. But in the midst, in the heart of it, there is set a deep well of truth—fathomless almost—one of those natural wells which God, with His omnipotent disregard of limitations, has sunk into the heart of the world.
That utter annihilation of death must be confusion to many when expressed in terms of St. Joseph lilies. Ninety per cent. of people will be likely to say, “How pretty!” That is the worst of it. They ought to be feeling, “How true!”
Yet what is a man to do? He can only express the immortality that he knows in terms of the material things he sees. St. Joseph lilies are as good as, if not better than anything else. But they might as well have been artichokes, which come up every year. Artichokes would have done just as well, only that people who object to artichokes would have said, “How silly!”
No one can object to St. Joseph lilies. Yet, whatever they are, you will never be able to persuade the world to see the immortal truth behind the mortal and material fact.