The Golden Thread - Part 1 Chapter 2
The Most Beautiful Color in the Heavens
Welcome to The Golden Thread: A Pilgrim's Journey with Joan and Thérèse. This series tells the story of a pilgrim discovering the hidden thread that runs through a life, a thread of grace, remembrance, and relationship. Each chapter builds upon those that came before it, so new readers may wish to begin with Chapter One and walk the journey from its beginning. I am grateful to have your company along the way.
The Most Beautiful Color in the Heavens
There are moments in life when beauty does not arrive as an object to be admired but as a presence to be encountered.
We discover this first in music, in friendship, in love, and eventually in the saints.
The saints are not merely remembered figures from a distant past. They are living members of a Kingdom whose horizons extend beyond the boundaries of time. Each reveals something unique of the Divine Beauty. Each carries a particular fragrance of heaven.
For me, two such presences have come to stand together in a way that is difficult to describe and impossible to forget.
Joan and Thérèse.
Individually they are magnificent. Together they form something still more beautiful, like two colors blending into a single radiance.
For many years I searched for words capable of describing this mystery. Eventually only one phrase seemed adequate:
Joan and Thérèse are the most beautiful color in the heavens.
The phrase is not meant as a theological proposition. It is the language of affection. It is the language of gratitude. It is the attempt of a pilgrim to describe the beauty he encounters while walking toward home.
When I think of Joan and Thérèse, I do not first imagine historical figures. I imagine a landscape.
I see rivers and meadows.
I see distant mountains touched by dawn.
I see fields illuminated by a golden light that seems to come from beyond the horizon itself.
And somewhere within that landscape I sense the nearness of two sisters whose friendship has quietly accompanied me for many years.
