A Valentine for ALL AGES

I dedicate today's post to MY HUSBAND. How good it feels to write that (every time!).

I ran into a coworker in the hall and we talked a bit about the origin of Valentines Day which remains shrouded in some degree of conjecture throughout history. I am partial to this legend:

• The Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, compiled about 1260 and one of the most-read books of the High Middle Ages, gives sufficient details of the saints and for each day of the liturgical year to inspire a homily on each occasion. The very brief vita of St Valentine has him refusing to deny Christ before the "Emperor Claudius"in the year 280. Before his head was cut off, this Valentine restored sight and hearing to the daughter of his jailer. Jacobus makes a play with the etymology of "Valentine", "as containing valour". It is probable that the various legends about St. Valentine were invented during the middle ages. Another account states: On the evening before Valentine was to be martyred for being a Christian, he passed a love note to his jailer's daughter that read, "From your Valentine." (extracted from Wikipedia)

This particular story really sparked something in me to consider Valentines' Day from a completely different point of view. When you consider one origin of the day to be a martyred saint, then "LOVE" has a whole different meaning. It is, of course, a wonderfully romantic thought that a saint's last words were a love note to a woman. But the GREAT LOVE has nothing to do with last words or a last note but his last act, which should not be overlooked. Step back and take a look at the entire picture: a man was martyred for his belief. His GREAT LOVE was His Savior. He died refusing to denounce the Greatest Love of all time - the love of a Lord whose sacrifice echoes throughout eternity and whose victory would bring him home. Humbled am I.

How great My Lord is that He died for me. That alone should overwhelm us to our knees. And yet, in my life, just to make sure I am listening, He gives me a wonderful man to share this life with and whose presence in my life not only reminds me of my Lord but draws me nearer to Him every day.

Making Love to Music

In January, I took MY HUSBAND to the symphony as his Christmas present. We had the great pleasure to see Yo-Yo Ma in concert. For those of you not into the classical scene. He is a world famous cellist. However, those words are such a paltry description of what we saw. We saw so much more than a performance, we saw a man deep in love with the music. His hands stroked life into notes written by composers long since passed. Men we read about in history books whose names we cannot even pronounce. In his hands, these aged compositions felt like breathable air, if you can breathe at all in their presence. MY HUSBAND commented when we left the concert hall, "Now I know what a virtuoso is." So true. He played from his heart, eyes closed the whole time, not so much as single page of music before him. He graced us with one encore, a crowd of thousands fell silent in one exhale as he raised his hand to the bow once more.

Few expriences in life engage every one of your senses. For the first time I can recall, I not only heard the music, I felt it, tasted it, smelled it. But that we could experience such a heightened sense of appreciation in the everyday, we might be that much closer to Heaven.

Losing Track of Time

MY HUSBAND and I didn't get a long honeymoon. He had started a new job just a month before the wedding and was not able to take too much time off. So we visited a lovely bed and breakfast (B&B) called the Coppersmith Inn in Galveston, Texas. I highly recommend it should you ever be in Galveston. We stayed in the country cottage and our hosts Karen and Pat had many stories to go along with their hospitality with a DELICIOUS breakfast every morning. Being our first B&B experience, we were instant converts.

Now it is the new year and MY HUSBAND tells me I need a break and he is right. This man is SO SMART! We have not had the opportunity to really take any time at all TO BE for an extended period of time. Weekends are nice and long weekends are nicer but to really relax, one needs enough time to lose track of time. That is when I KNOW I am relaxed. Twice in my life I have freed from the shackles of tracking time:

- Poolside at the Fiesta Americana hotel in Cozumel in 1997 with one of my closest friends, she and I were drinking pina coladas and listening to the roll of the waves just across the footbridge and time was a distant memory.

- On the beach in Marseilles in the summer of 1998 on a vacation with my best friend and her brother. I was sunning myself and decided to journal while we lay there basking in youthful immortality and I started to write down the date and realized that I had no idea what day or date it was.

I would say that it's about time I lose track of it again. So we are heading out in a couple of weeks for a few days to hit another B&B in driving distance. And I plan to take my watch off the minute we leave and not even put it on until we return home. Time spent without a watch is priceless; time spent living by a watch isn't really LIVING and often you lose more time than you gain.

~Santé