P.S

as a sort of post script to my last post, here is an excerpt from my scribble notebook a few weeks ago.

"The chattering of birds outside the window has been immeasurably reviving today. I've had a bout of the flu, and to be able to see and hear the cheerful flock of sparrows in their muted browns, hopping about excitedly in the bush, happy about temporary melted patches and fleeting streaks of blue sky has made me feel alive.

A little taste of heaven I think, this brightening of color, sound, sharpening of detail. Moments like these I feel I've been seeing black and white for a while. I've been starved for color, though hardly knowing it, numbed to sharp detail, deaf to the shouting wonder of the world.

And when I feel I've got my eyes back, I'm all the more excited for heaven where reality will be more real than we've ever know. Hard will be harder, soft will be softer. War will become victory, light will overcome darkness, and my eyes will no longer grow weary of wondering."

Glimpses

The more I travel, the smaller I feel in the world, and the happier I feel in seeing; I'm wide-eyed fascinated at this crazy life on this spinning planet. So long as I can still see the colors of each day, I'm all right. When I can see sixteen shades of blue in the sky, or gradations of sparrow-brown, bright eyes flecked with memories and different colors... and I remember God's handiwork is in every fiber... that's when I can laugh at the riotous, blazing, happiness of the sky; laugh with joy that I can actually know Him, know God! I can even laugh at tomorrow.

My favorite stories: in books, in movies, in life; are the ones that help me see. That's why I read, that's why I travel. Glimpses. Never wanting to let my eyes get weary of seeing; encouraging with new sights, new lands for the imagination, lest monotony or fatigue trick my mind into thinking the color is gone. Beauty. The unseen behind the seen.

"Beauty is a path along which we catch a glimpse of the chimneystacks of home; it is a lamp in the window on a dark night, a song remembered from our infancy. Beauty sings what the youngest part of our souls already knows: this is only the beginning." --Lanier Ivester

beside the fire...

“I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door”

― J.R.R. Tolkien