next to the toffee tree

I was texting today, while the sun went down, and I commented — It’s beautiful here.

This is somewhat of a strange thing to say, because when I’m brutally honest with everyone, I don’t find Wainwright that beautiful very often, and maybe that makes this all the more special.

I find the outskirts of Wainwright very beautiful, the canola is blooming right now, and I remember how it made me feel when I rolled into it, snow lightly falling, fresh off 43 hours of travel that had begun in Jerusalem in what seems like another life ago now. And I remember an excursion I took with my sister this winter, a search for beauty? — I would definitely call it that…but we never called it that at the time for more than one reason. But, never the less, we left Wainwright and went to the outskirts to find some trees overcome a million times over by the frost.

My sister is beautiful. I have always think of her as a beautiful piece of art fashioned by God, and in some moments, like those out there in the ice-flanked trees, the sun shines off her face and she glimpses as Helen of Troy. These are just moments, though, in which I get to be Castor for a second and then they are gone.

Its really interesting watching the character being formed into someone’s face. We all look at pictures of our high school days, then skip to the present and see how life has weathered and shaped the visage. But with my sister I’ve been a much more consistant student. I have this joke with her where I make my hands into circles and place them over my face, imitating think coke-bottle glasses. I then put on the silliest grin I could possibly muster and say “Hi, I’m Mary! I have pink-flower colored glasses! I’m in grade one! Want to be my friend?!” It’s a good laugh, and it is one of my most vivid images of her, full of life and stupid looking. Like, she just looked thick.

I’ve watched how these seasons have changed her, and I dare say that the pain and the joy that brings progress might be called a beautiful thing if you look at her face, even when watching the tears cut new lines that won’t go away. They are formed for good, can we call it beauty?

Today as the sun went down, to the south there was a great congregation of cloud. Fire colors and pinks — arranged in a sort of Colosseum, so that the center floor where the gladiators would die was a solid veil of blue. It was grand, and I was on the outside. I imagined it to be a Colosseum of gods, the center — all that blue — holding the secret.

This has been my hardest summer. There were four weeks of 2005 that I consider to be some of the hardest of my entire life, dark-dark-dark and even as I remember them now a phantom pain runs up in me. A black scar to remind me of things I rather not be reminded of.

I was driving tonight as I watched the sunset, a classic introverted thing to do. The official word on the street (“the street” being Internet personality tests) is that I’m the most introverted of all extroverted personalities. That makes sense to me, but the way I’ve always described it is this: I love to be with people, but I need time alone.

I looked out into all that blue, into the secret of God, and began to ask a list of questions I have of God, but soon gave up, I surmize, for one of two reasons (there could be others) – I don’t actually have a list because I have not mouth to talk of it* or I can’t imagine any answers that I would want to hear.

Donald Miller said that at one time he didn’t care for God or Jazz because neither resolved. I’m not going to resolve this either, other than I’ll say this: the Colosseum of the gods wasn’t over Wainwright it was out of town, yet I say that Wainwright is beautiful. I say it because I really needed a win for the home team, and I think this was a win that I could will into existence.

* In the Achebe Things Fall Apart sense, I realize this might mislead some if they think in the Till We Have Faces sense