Incandescence

Have you ever had a moment when you realize the absolute delight of living and loving, when you pause and drink in the scene around you, wanting to memorize the sights and sounds and smells and tastes because you know way down deep in the parts of your heart you are most afraid to reveal that this moment is as close to perfection as can be realized in your very brief tenure on the planet?  When this awareness fills you with such joy it feels as though your heart will literally burst?  

I felt that tonight.

Ten years ago, my cousin married the love of his life.  It was a wedding quite different from the traditional ceremonies given that it was performed in the church they had recently bought and renovated into their home and its attendants and guests were costumed in myriad ways.  It was a day of great happiness and celebration, the bride and groom radiating light wherever they moved.

A decade later, we gathered once again, this time in a farm they had bought and renovated.  While nieces cast fishing lines in one of the ponds and friends’ children rode bikes and scampered about, a bluesy band assembled on the deck.  Fireflies hovered over the darkening lawn, matched only by the twinkle lights strung merrily around the deck.  The brilliant full moon marked the summer solstice in the east as the tiki torches flared, jealously flickering at the bonfire blazing by the barn.  Small hands reached for glow sticks and sparklers while family and friends talked and laughed in small groups here and there, four generations come together to revel and make merry.  Fireworks rose about the trees, streaks of reds and greens and blues and golds, temporarily hiding the emerging stars in a cloudless sky.  

As I sat and watched this one-time bridegroom strum his guitar and sing the requests being proffered from the crowd, I turned.  In the soft light of the torches and twinkling bulbs, his bride stood slightly apart, a crooked smile adorning her face.  In her eyes was the same look I saw ten years ago as she came forward to meet him at the altar: a fervent glow, incandescence.  

So much love.  

To have seen my family laughing and singing and talking and clapping and hugging; to have witnessed that moment; to know there is so much love in the world, and to feel it all around me in that space and time.  I am blessed and humbled beyond the words I usually find so readily.