OpEd:To deny anyone life is an unspeakable tragedy

We should take every opportunity to speak for life and Glenda uses her talents to do so and even get it in the Tennessean who support abortion on demand. Way to go Glenda

Nov. 6, 2010, Tennessee Voices

By Glenda Joy Clark

Glenda Joy Clark

While stand­ing across from the Women’s Cen­ter abor­tion clinic, I couldn’t believe how blue the sky was. Or how the Octo­ber wind felt as it tossed my hair. Or how lovely the songs were that the birds sang in the trees. I felt a famil­iar warmth deep inside my chest that I have come to rec­og­nize as joy.
Not a jumping-up-and-down joy, but the kind that moves around inside me like warm honey. A spon­ta­neous response to the sim­ple plea­sures of what we call life.

Life’s sweet­ness touches us
All I could think of was the sights, smells and sounds of my own life. I have wit­nessed thou­sands of incred­i­ble sun­sets, each one like a rare painting.
I have spent hours and hours watch­ing the ever-changing forms of the white, bil­lowy clouds that dec­o­rate a pris­tine blue sky.
For how many birds have I paused to hear their songs of joy? Thou­sands! I have felt the cool, wet grass of a hun­dred sum­mer morn­ings on my bare feet.
I have breathed in the invig­o­rat­ing aroma of an unex­pected spring rain and felt its refresh­ing drops fall softly on my face.
I have danced in the rain and stomped in pud­dles. I have been ren­dered speech­less by the pro­found won­der — and awe­some silence — of a sud­den snow­storm so many times I can­not count them.
On occa­sions with­out num­ber, I have seen the majesty of light­ning and found myself star­tled at the sheer power of thun­der.
But on this day, I stand qui­etly with oth­ers, most of whom I do not know.
We all stand: some in silence, and some pac­ing like fathers in a wait­ing room. We wait while hop­ing and pray­ing that some bar­rier will prove an insur­mount­able obsta­cle to the plans of the day. A thought. A dream. A word.
Or maybe the color of the azure sky will shout or the wind will blow away the clouds from a clouded mind, or the birds will sing a song about the exquis­ite beauty of life that the wind will inter­pret to a lis­ten­ing ear.
I have been around awhile and learned many lessons. But while stand­ing across from that facil­ity, I real­ized one stood out fore­most in my mind among many others:
Life is good. Even in its bit­ter moments, the sweet­ness of life lingers still.
To deny any­one the multi-faceted delight of what it means to live is, for me, an unspeak­able loss.
Glenda Joy Clark, a pho­tog­ra­pher and owner of Restore Won­der, lives in Goodlettsville.