The arc of the sun is higher in the sky each day. Flower buds here and there have sprouted in the grass, but the great trees are still bare and black against the sky striped with clouds.
The days go by quickly. The world moves along, and it seems as if everything is going to go on just like it is now. But soon it will be Lent, and then Spring, and then Easter and then Summer.
I can look back to last year's blog entry, or a diary entry from twenty years ago, and wonder where the time has gone. The events seems to be right there, and the written word clothes the memory and gives vivid witness to its continuing presence in the soul.
Some things seem the same always. A generation ago, I saw this same sky on a winter's afternoon. I breathed this same air and felt the same warmth of the sun. And yet, the people who I care most about in the world, the people with whom I share every day, were unknown to me. Twenty five years ago, I had not yet met Eileen. I could not even imagine her, and the life we share together. So much that makes up who I am simply did not exist. The children did not exist. The sky looked just as it does now, but I was alone.
And in another generation, the sky will again glow as it does now. What kind of turmoil will the world have endured between now and then? Where will we all be?
I will have continued, and perhaps completed, my part in this story. There is nothing vivid about the future, except what I have learned up to this moment, which convinces me that everything is already present in hope. I know that there is a story, and that I am not meant to be alone.
