Last night I was sitting at dinner, comfortably watching Meg learn to cut her food (which is a big step, honestly, although it sometimes results in rogue splashes of balsamic vinegar all over the table) and kind of expecting to be sitting there for another hour or so. It's my nightly ritual; I head into the dining room right at five, eat in the first ten or so minutes (I'm not a Wilks for nothing) and then just sit and chat until around six thirty. Last night my cucumber-cutting, vinegar-spraying friend disrupted my routine.Let's go watch the sunset.
In the following hour and a half, I was on the receiving end of one of the more overwhelming visual assaults I've ever experienced. Every time I blinked, my eyes were opened again to new colours and shapes and patterns. The light danced on the water, oranges and pinks reflected on rapturous faces lining the end of the dock. The sun cut a trail of fire through the ocean wide enough that I thought for a wild moment that I really could have run across it, my feet buoyed by the liquid light. We stood there, talking and being silent, watchers at the close of a day as creativity unfolded across the open sky. The air was painted in colours so startling and bold that it seemed as though a child's hand held the brush. We turned to each other over and over again, seeking confirmation that you're really seeing this, right? This is really happening? Our fallen world can actually look like this?
And I may never sit in the dining room again.
More here, as though glory could be captured through glass.
Addendum:
I mentioned the blazing sky in an email to my brother who responded with the following:
Wow. Totally awesome. I can't get enough sunsets; I think we inherit it from granny. I like to think about the fact that, although we usually see a sunset as a discrete event, it's really more like a 24 hour, 7 day a week, 52 week a year neverending display of glory. What I mean is, if you could travel at just the right speed westward, you would live in a world with an orange sky instead of a blue one.Which is why I love my family so much.
