Last night was a night of marking the old and the new, the sorrowful and the hopeful. First, we marked the anniversary of September 11, 2001. On that day, Paul was living in London and Jana was living in Cleveland. We had only met a couple of months before and were beginning to recognize the qualities of true companions in one another - you know that feeling, there are friends and then there are companions, true companions for the way. So many people were spurred to different ways of living after 9/11. Ours was to go with companionship and to value relationship over the other many, sundry realities of life going on for both of us at the time, much of which was good but none of which was as life-giving as going for it together.
Last night on a beautiful pile of quartz jutting out of red sand desert, looking across to all the peaks of the McDonnel ranges east and west, sun setting in perfect orange pink against the fullest empty blue sky you've ever seen, we remembered that we have sought beauty and peace on each anniversary of September 11. In fact, we have been now in three of the most beautiful places on earth on this day: on little Frank Island off the west coast of Vancouver Island, on the Isle of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, and now here in the middle of the biggest island on earth, surrounded by the sand left soft by seas millions of years washed on.
Seeking beauty and peace and finding it on an epic scale in places like these, even for a day, is a gracious gift.