Do me a favor. I have an overwhelming desire to impart something breathtakingly beautiful to you. Please read this and then close your eyes. Sit back in your seat. Then try to picture it all in your mind. Let me see if I can do it justice.

Look at the picture above which we took from our mirpeset when we first moved here last summer of our front walk, the park, the hills in the background. This is the view we had earlier this evening:

It's 15 minutes before the end of Shabbos. David and I are sitting on our glider, Emma in my lap, on our smaller mirpeset, facing exactly what you see in the picture. It's dusk; the sun has set but it's not yet fully dark. There are no clouds in the sky, save for some wispy cotton here and there. Only one bright light glitters so far which I found out later this evening was Saturn, the brightest planet this time of year. It's about 70 degrees and a faint breeze is blowing. Even though we live at a major intersection (for these here parts), no car passes by. We hear crickets and possibly frogs. Above us, one floor up and diagonally across, a father and his son also sit on their mirpeset. It's obvious to us, even without knowledge of the language, that Abba is helping his young son with tomorrow's homework; asking him questions, discussing points with him. (We pick up a few words here and there - and are quite proud of ourselves.) Across the street, the hills are finally green; blossoms are everywhere (my eyes and nose have been quite cognizant of this the past few days - and scores of families were out there walking this beautiful Shabbos afternoon).

Abba leaves to go to shul for maariv and we are left in the darkness, a sky lit up now by multitudes of stars, the quiet, the crickets, the warm breeze, the hills, the glider slowly rocking, the immense gratitude - could Shamayim possibly be more kodesh (holy) than this?