Look at that sea, girls—all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

There are three or four books in my library that I have read so many times that the covers are falling off and the pages are tattered. My copy of Anne looks as well-loved as the skin horse in The Velveteen Rabbit, but I cannot imagine reading about Anne from any other pages. When I need a book to read at night to put me to sleep, this is the book I most often reach for — not because it is boring but because it relaxes me. The characters are comfortable to me, perhaps because over the years they have become real in a different way from the people I share life with. As Richard Bach wrote in Illusions, “If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.” While the sadness of that quote never escapes me, because I believe we need real people with bodies and heartbeats and laughter and tears and good conversation to share life with, for many of us there are a few fictional characters who have become real for us in a way that shapes parts of who we are. As I think about this, I wonder if for some people other things in life work this way — for example, sports teams. Perhaps it can be anything in life that remains something of a constant while other aspects of our world are constantly changing.

The pages of each Anne book are filled with truths. I’m not really sure why this is the one I was thinking of this morning, except that when I find myself yearning or longing for something I do not have, these words and others from Anne echo in my heart. The beauty of the world around us — in whatever form that beauty takes (and sometime I will write about my thoughts on just that!) — is never lessened because of things we have or do not have. Anne is so right, the beauty sun rippling on water, the first rays of sun spreading over fog-dappled fields, the sun setting behind the green fields on the other side of the road in the evening, the first sliver of crescent moon after the dark nights of a new moon, the very first buds beginning to swell in Spring or the first leaf tinged with red as Autumn approaches, the swirl of cafe in the white foam of a beautiful cafe con leche in Spain, an older couple holding hands in downtown Madrid, the sound of shared laughter, a band that swings or a voice that really sings, Sibelius and Mahler and Strauss, tiny crocuses peeking up out of the brown grass, an emerald green bug or a frog on the driveway, reflections in the Shawnee Run creek….would not have been any more beautiful to my eyes and heart If I had “millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”

That said, I do believe that for Anne as well as for me beauty can be richer when shared. Anne’s outlook on the world and life was never quite understood or shared by the girls that entered her previously lonely life, but her appreciation for all the world around her was still increased by the entrance of their friendship into her life. She had a gift of seeing beyond the surface to the richer subtleties of life in the presence as well as the potential for the future. Yes, she yearned for puffed sleeves. But when she received them in the form of a very unexpected gift, she realized that what made them beautiful had nothing to do with the sleeves themselves — their greatest beauty was from the love from which the dress they were a part of had been given.

So many thoughts tumbling in and adding too many layers to the central thoughts of this morning. This means it’s time to close.