Very often on our anniversary, Andy and I travel to the Wild West (Fort Worth) to avail ourselves of museums, gardens, fountain-filled public spaces, our favorite frozen Bellinis, and free public parking (a thing the city of Dallas, for all its greatness, does not yet comprehend).
This week is our 30th anniversary and, creatures of habit that we are, we found ourselves this past Saturday afternoon, headed west in the usual heavy traffic that makes up I-20, destination: Amon Carter Museum.
There were a couple of new exhibits that looked interesting on the website, but I wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary. I felt a bit bad that I hadn't been able to find something more meaningful for our anniversary outing, but we're going to Scotland and Ireland in September for the real party. Fort Worth is nice in the meantime, and the Amon Carter has a bunch of Georgia O'Keefe paintings that I'm happy to visit anytime, so whatevs.
We came through the central hallway, enjoying the new exhibit of Gego prints, then headed into the main atrium to go upstairs to an exhibit of Polaroid photography that looked like fun.
As I turned into the atrium, I gasped out loud as I caught a glimpse of a rainbow, up in the corner of the room.
This is Plexus no. 34 by Dallas-based artist Gabriel Dawe, heart-blowingly beautiful from a million different angles.
Of course, it's especially heart-blowingly meaningful because June is LGBTQ Pride month, and this week we're observing the one-year anniversary of the Orlando Pulse massacre, where 49 victims lost their lives to internalized homophobic hatred. 50 victims, if we count the shooter.
I wrote about the rainbow that stood over us during the Pulse vigil last year, and how it comforted me on that day of terrible grief.
I wasn't expecting a rainbow this year. Not on a sunny afternoon in my go-to museum in Fort Worth.
But I wandered around under this rainbow with tears in my eyes, marveling at how beauty shows up in the ordinary and in the painful, as if it always exists, even when we can't see it.
Here's another unexpected rainbow moment from the weekend.
Sunday night, we were out at the Equality march in Dallas. My friend Mark took this picture, only realizing after he posted it to Facebook that he'd caught a cross in the Texas Pride flag.
Of all the things I envisioned for what life would be like around our 30th wedding anniversary, I really never saw us marching in Pride events.
But Love finds us, wherever we are, no matter how old we are.
And it seems that at some point, if Love is going to keep growing (everything living must grow; if it stops growing, it's dead) then at some point, Love must escape from the confines of our own little lives and expand into Love for others, both our neighbors and those we may have previously perceived to be our enemies.
Our 30th anniversary this week coincides with the second anniversary of marriage equality for the LGBTQ community, as well as the 50th anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia SCOTUS decision that abolished laws against interracial marriage.
I like that it's not just about us this week.
I like that we're celebrating that Love is Love for everyone, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation.
"I was always being moved toward greated differentiation and larger viewpoints, and simultaneously toward a greater inclusivity in my ideas, a deeper understanding of people, and a more honest sense of justice. God always became bigger and led me to bigger places." Richard Rohr, Falling Upward
May the moral arc of the universe continue to bend toward justice.
May every anniversary of love, individual and collective, open us up to greater acceptance, to more understanding, and to an ever-expanding flow of love in us, through us, and beyond us.
May Love grow beyond anything that we can ask, think, or even dare to dream.
This year, every year, 30 years behind us, 30 years more.
