what color is your curtain?

Kermit put up curtain rods this weekend. I put up the white curtains in our bedroom. I woke up to see the half-transparent eyelet-like sheets blowing gently in the breeze through the window, which struck me as surprisingly beautiful, winsome, like a girl's dress blowing in the Easter wind, like something out of a Jessie Wilcox Smith illustration of Little Women, full of the emotive sentiment of young girls and breezy spring days. Otherwise, the curtains are like walking into your own familiar room of no surprises and finding a mannequin staring at you from the corner. Nothing to make one startle.

We say there's a curtain between us and the Other world. Our eyes cannot behold the Lord because our window to the soul is dim, curtained off, thus we think it an evil that we cannot access the spirit world as we might like. But we dress our windows for comfort, for visual delight, for practical protection from extreme temperatures and snooping night eyes. Perhaps the drapes between us and the Other protect us, shield our mortal eyes from something, the things we cannot bear to see, not for their horror but for extreme goodness, the holiness of Him who is brighter than the sun.