The Mediterranean Love Plan by Stephen Arterburn

Author:Stephen Arterburn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2017-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

BEAUTY IN NATURE

Was she really going to live in this for a whole month? Up to now she had had to take what beauty she could as she went along, snatching at little bits of it when she came cross it—a patch of daisies on a fine day … a flash of sunset between two chimney pots. She had never been in definitely, completely beautiful places.

—LOTTIE, THE ENCHANTED APRIL

The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim’s novel from the early 1920s (made into a marvelous film in the early ’90s), opens with the story of two life-weary English wives who have, each in her own way, put their happiness on hold for the purpose of being especially good, sacrificing wives. They’ve honored the needs of others so far above their own that their hearts have shriveled, like starving waifs, orphaned by their own lack of self-care. In addition, they were both neglected and taken for granted by husbands with severely misplaced priorities. “For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness,” the author describes one of the ladies. “She wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything that would remind her of beautiful things, that might set her off again longing, desiring.”

For this is what beauty does when we happen upon it: it awakens desire, particularly desire for sharing happiness with someone we love, who loves us in return.

On a grey, drippy London day, one of the main characters, Lottie, opens a copy of the Times and reads an advertisement: “To Those Who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval Italian castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April.”1

Lottie’s heart begins to pound. What would it be like to experience such beauty? Not to mention the respite from her life of constant duty and service to her exacting husband? After much handwringing and debate, Lottie and her new friend, Rose, decide to use their personal savings to rent the villa, along with two other women, boldly leaving their husbands behind in England to fend for themselves. The ladies arrive in Italy in the dead of a rain-drenched night, but with the help of the Italian staff, they find their way to their rooms and fall fast asleep.

The next morning, Lottie wakens refreshed, and after a few minutes of luxuriating in her new surroundings, she runs to her bedroom window and throws open the shutters. What she beholds there goes straight to her soul.

“All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light.”2 Lottie can only stand and stare as she tries to take it all in. “Such beauty; and she was there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents came up to the window and caressed her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.