Smiling – with Julie, Sarah and Joe.

The first Friday of October – yesterday – was World Smile Day. Started by Harvey Ball, the commercial artist who created the smiley face, it reminds us of the power of a smile.

Three people helped me to smile yesterday…

…Wednesday was Julie Andrews’ 90^th birthday. We remembered this at our ‘Singing for Wellbeing’ group singing several of ‘Sound of Music’ songs– including ‘My favourite Things’:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favourite things

Yesterday I enjoyed the sound of the rain on the conservatory roof, the crunch of acorns beneath my feet, completing a Killer Sudoku…

I smile when I ‘simply remember my favourite things’.

… Dame Sarah Mullally will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. A former NHS chief nurse, she became a priest in 2006 and Bishop of London in 2018.

She promised to confront the Church’s deeply harmful safeguarding failures: ‘…We must all be willing to have light shone on our actions, regardless of our role in the Church.’

Speaking of Thursday’s Manchester synagogue attack, she described the Church’s ‘…responsibility to be a people who stand with the Jewish community against antisemitism in all its forms. Hatred and racism of any kind cannot be allowed to tear us apart.’

I smile when I hear good people saying good things.

…October’s ‘Premier Christianity’ tells of Joe: ‘A year ago, I was a high functioning alcoholic whose life had finally fallen apart. After two decades of drinking, I found myself in hospital again, this time facing homelessness too. I moved into Green Pastures, Derby… Living in a dry house, surrounded by others with complicated stories but the same desire to move forward gave me the stability I’d been missing…’

Joe’s now been eight months sober, with ‘a place to belong, the tools to change, and the hope of a future he never thought he’d have’.

I smile when I hear stories of transformation and hope.