I was looking at the peach tree in blossom, and then I suddenly felt that it was not just the tree that was beautiful, but LIVING BEAUTY seemed to be coming through it, and it was in touch with me. It was an intensely personal contact, and it was like some BEING was communicating with me in a wordless way. It was like meeting some very special person who had an extraordinary effect on me. This eternity, I felt, was seeking itself through the activity of innumerable forms of life -- through nature, as with a flower or spider weaving a web, or through a human being creating a work of art, so that the same life would express itself through me... I was flooded by an overwhelming sense of harmony. In a flash countless aspects of beauty were revealed to me which I had never realized before.
Our love has been anything but perfect and anything but static. Inevitably there have been times when one of us has outrun the other and has had to wait patiently for the other to catch up. There have been times when we have misunderstood each other, demanded too much of each other, been insensitive to the other's needs. I do not believe there is any marriage where this does not happen. The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys. I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over. Sometimes these desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing than it could possibly have been without it.