Oh, you old raspberry hedge! How grateful I am to you! For months you have been giving me gifts! Every day new blushes of fruit come out of your shoots. For months. Every day You please me. And I gratefully accept. And I thank You for Your gifts with every plucking of Your fruits.
There I see them! You wave them at me. Slightly hidden by the protective green of the leaves. An invitation! An invitation to share. To be given a gift. To enjoyment. To the good deed! And I pluck gently at the fruit. No! It is not ready yet. Maybe not ready for me. It is still firm. But the one next to it. It has sprung there for me. I may take it with the great feeling of good intention, of goodwill and security. Of being given. Of love. So unresistingly and so easily it releases itself between my gentle fingers. It is almost a caress. A tender caress only.
You loving, beloved raspberry hedge. So with each pluck I give thanks, with each pluck I feel the meaning. The gift for me or the gift for another. You share justly, for you share selflessly in quiet joy. Thank You, thank You, I say with each gift I may take from You.
No thorn pricks me. And if it does, then I feel: it’s enough. Now the rest remains for others. Tomorrow… or perhaps already tonight, I may return. Then I may receive again, the new, the fresh red that has sprouted from you, and I may feel love and give love.
You old raspberry hedge. In you sees the ideal of the world, who keeps the view directed to the eternal. Thank you! For the good you do me.