A Knock on the Door From Poland

I went to the Post Office this morning to send some parcels, and had to pay using my debit card, as paying the plumber this morning had eaten the rest of my cash. The clerk asked me if I wanted "cash back" from my account, and I nearly said no, when I thought that an extra ten pounds would be useful in case of emergency, so I opted to withdraw the money from my debit account.

Later this afternoon, I was comfortably ensconced on the sofa watching an episode of House MD, when there was a loud knock at the door. I got up a tad reluctantly, as this was the third interruption in one episode, but I am really glad that I did.

At the door was a pretty young woman, who handed me a card, explaining who she was and why she was here. She was from near Warsaw, Poland, and was in Britain selling some of her drawings door-to-door here in order to fund her way through art college. (This does happen quite a lot, especially since the advent of dirt-cheap air fares within Europe).

Her English was quite limited, but her art work was absolutely superb. DoomHamster and I stood enthralled as we looked through her work, and we each bought a drawing.
She was so thrilled when we said we wanted to buy two, she hugged us both. We were equally thrilled with the lovely pictures we had acquired so unexpectedly.

After a few minutes I went out into the street to see if she had had any more luck in selling her work. She obviously hadn`t judging by the fair distance up the street she had travelled, which made me quite sad.
I do hope she will be ok, and that she will be able to work her way through college, for her talent is outstanding and her determination to succeed laudable.

After she had gone, I began to think of how much more I could have done for that girl. It was a hot day, and she was trudging from door to door, and to my shame, I realised that I had been so absorbed in praising her talent that I didn`t even offer her a cold drink or a snack.

I might have supoported her work, but I did not exercise hospitality as St Benedict commands us to: "Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way," Benedict wrote."The love of Christ must come before all else."

Although my police neighbours would have said that in light of a spate of recent distraction burglaries in our town that I was prudent not to allow a stranger into my home, I feel guilty and ashamed that I did not...........

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