When we were kids it was acceptable for a ten year old to wander outside. We were encumbered with neither chaperone nor schedule. One such morning thirty years ago I found myself following a dirt road in the woods. As the road turned a corner, it came out of the trees, and I suddenly stood before the most beautiful field I had ever seen.
It was a vast expanse of clover, rippling green and all in bloom. Dozens of little yellow butterflies danced and hovered over the purple blossoms. To my child eyes it seemed like a magic place, a place outside the Earth I knew.
The memory returned to me last month along a rural road. As I looked beyond the field to a wide blue sky, I felt a return to that childnood delight. It's a bittersweet, piercing happiness we all recognize - a yearning for the Eternal that seems to lie just beyond our reach.
