I'm keeping a list of moments that have the capacity to restore, in some small measure, my faith in how things are supposed to be.
It's getting longer all the time, with things like:
The wonder-filled smile of parents who have just heard their baby laugh for the first time.
The cautious jubilation of a child who has just mastered the fine art of riding a bike.
Two faithful friends enjoying a game of chess, as if it doesn't matter who wins as long as they play together.
A cool fall day and a walk to enjoy it in.
An April ramble down Sugar Ridge Road in Bristol, Texas when the bluebonnets are in full bloom.
A sweet Texas porch with a rocker.
The smoky tang of really great barbecue.
The feel of a really good book when you turn the page in expectation.
The swing of a tassel turned to the other side of the mortarboard at graduation.
Recently, I added a new moment to the list.
When a serendipitous double rainbow briefly claimed the sky over The Oaks on Aug. 10 like a benediction, a couple hundred wedding guests rushed to the massive plate glass windows of the historic Maryland country inn.
Photographers Brian and Rebecca Palmer knew what to do. They hustled the bride and groom out to the riverside grounds of the inn where Fay Wray and Gary Cooper stayed while making the last silent movie.
"We've never had a rainbow," Rebecca Palmer said later.
The groom was my son, and the pictures of him with new wife Megh under the arc that curves to form a circle in the reflection on the Miles River are so lovely they appear to have been Photoshopped.
Irish heritage runs deep in both the newlyweds' families, so it would be easy enough to draw the analogy that the pair had found love's gold at the end of the rainbow.
However, seeing them there, two lovely young people, an engineer and a teacher, their masters degrees behind them and their lives together ahead of them and their hearts openly brimming with newly-wedded bliss and love, at the risk of getting mushy and even completely maudlin, I make a mor e spiritual connection.
I remember some of the challenging places this young man has been, in particular. Our family has stories from his youth that would curl your hair – although the one about the six months he spent in a body cast after a go-cart accident comes to mind first, there are others. A number of them.
I see him, and her, and that rainbow, and I think of all the things I wish for them, and the things that have already come true.
It's my theory that the despondency we see in so many youth today comes from our failure as the adults in their lives to tell them what we've come through. Because they don't know – and we do – that the sun will come out tomorrow, like the song from the Broadway musical 'Annie' says. That there's a rainbow after the rain. That, like the Pink Martini song, 'Hang On Little Tomatoe!' says, it's important to dig in and hold on determinedly. That time heals all wounds, and all good things come to those who wait (and work.)
It's my observation that these are lessons we need to remaster, again and again, through life's rainshowers. Because the rains will come, oh yes they will – and they fall on everyone, sooner or later.
But for some reason, when I look at that extraordinary wedding picture that's now so dear to me, I'm reminded of the rainbow as a symbol of God's promise to Noah, and then to what English missionary William Carey said over 150 years ago.
"The future's as bright as the promises of God."
It's just one of those moments, I guess.
