Beautiful Rubbish

God looked over everything he had made;
it was so good, so very good! Genesis 1 verse 31

In December, shortly after arriving in Adelaide I got lost while out for a walk! There I was so busy admiring the gorgeous traditional houses and marvelling at the various architectural wonders found in each tree lined street that I found myself in a sea of interwoven roads and junctions.  All with the familiar names of home yet, all the while being so utterly strange and unknown.

But there in that new place, as I stopped to pray for divine recollection or angelic direction, I discovered something quite, quite wonderful; leaf litter.

This glorious rubbish was strewn like a pot pourri of happiness in gutters and on pavements. Over the circles of soil beneath mature shady trees and on grassy verges and stony spaces, where hidden roots break up driveways and paving.

Arriving home many hours later, thirsty, tired and foot sore, my heart was singing. For I had only ever seen slushy muddy rotting compost and now I had found a treasury of heaven sent delight .

When I left Scotland for Australia a friend asked me what I would ‘do’? Do? Yes do? Do about my creativity, my gift, my craft, my art glass? And beautiful rubbish became what I ‘did’, as over the next three months I sought to both rejoice it in and to record it.

For posterity and for projects yet unplanned.

Now while I’ve utterly adored the art work and the sculptures and the scenery and the seascapes which I was blessed beyond measure to experience in these far off lands, it was this new world of leaf litter, found right at my feet, which became my muse and inspiration. For each time I espied a new scattering of joy I was compelled to stop and once again capture and appreciate its remarkable beauty.

My daughter tells me that my beautiful rubbish is a scourge to many people here and that regular letters of complaint feature in local papers. Petitions of request to sweep it away are made regularly to whoever might listen.

My spouse also tells me he is affronted at my attempts to journal this discovery and my album should be renamed ‘embarrassed husband’!

But clearly they are not seeing what I am seeing and they are not hearing what I hear. Because each time I bend down with my little point and shoot camera I hear the creator of the universe whisper in my ear; ‘you are not rubbish, you are beautiful.’