sunshine

I like looking at people - especially people I love - in the sunshine. Indoors, everyone looks like a washed-out brunette. Outdoors, black hair glints in the sunlight, blonde hair shines with glory, and even the actual brunettes look radiant. Eyes that all looked mud-colored turn out to be bright blue, or sherry-brown, or green and gold like a creekbed in the mountains. Sunlight brings out beauty.


Today, at the end of mass, we sang "Amazing Grace". I think "Amazing Grace" was the first hymn I learned all the verses to when I was a child (prompting the development of a lifelong love of learning all the verses).

And my favorite was the last verse, that talked about heaven. It gave me shivers:

When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun.

Today I sang that along with the rest of the congregation, as I stood in the back, rocking my son. We'd all just come back from taking communion together, and all of the sudden I felt like I was seeing everyone, my parish family, in the sunlight. The light of eternity. I looked at them all, even the ones I don't know that well, or don't like that much, and was overwhelmed with joy, because we were all singing about the day when we'd be doing this - this praise, this communion, this worship - all together, endlessly, in the glory of the presence of God. And everyone all of the sudden looked brighter, looked loveable.

It was like seeing them in the sunlight.


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica