One cannot live in
memories: that is, in the past. Why do anniversaries take hold so strongly in
ten-year clumps? Is it because I have ten fingers and ten toes that I count to
the end of a cycle, which begins again?
What shall be
saved? There are events that become the principal occasion in many lives. These
lie not lightly, but heavily sleeping or disturbing sleep through many years.
It feels like losing track of decades, though decades, like rosaries, are told.
We can’t live with
the dead, our faults irretrievable, our mistakes inexorable, unless we do our
best to embody their virtues. Rachel’s great virtue was beauty. Aquinas here
gives a trinity: wholeness (the Buddhist ‘isness’ a thing the essence of itself),
proportion (exquisitely balanced that all elements are pleasing both to reason
and the senses) and clarity (which has the power to illuminate the meaning of
itself). The meaning of beauty is expression of divine truth.
There was a time
before Rachel. Now there is a time after Rachel. Twenty years since, like Dante’s
Beatrice, she departed from this world. To honour Rachel, I seek to reflect
beauty wherever I encounter it.
