Patterns

This past weekend was full of wonderful and beautiful sights and moments. I find it intriguing when patterns start to emerge in my surroundings, and this weekend I was looking for fleur de lis. Last year, for our anniversary, Matt, knowing that I love stained glass, had wanted to have a piece custom made for my window. But it just wasn't good timing. I couldn't really think of what pattern I wanted and some symbols and colors were almost disturbing to me at the time. A stained glass piece starts at $150.00 and usually runs much higher, and I wasn't ready to spend money on something that I might not want to treasure for many years to come.

So this past weekend Matt and I celebrated our 14th Anniversary and I wanted it to be a very special celebration. But we didn't have a ton of cash. In the end it didn't make a bit of difference. It truly felt like every moment of our trip was a gift. Some moments were planned and some weren't--and I discovered that each was precious in its own way. (I'll tell you more about it in another post--and I'll try to put a slideshow up.)
One of the things Matt and I decided to do was go to the Corning Glass Museum. Did I mention I love stained glass? It's something that I have a deep affinity for. I thought perhaps I would be able to find a glass or stained glass fleur de lis. It's a symbol that has become significant to me.

On Sunday afternoon, we had a little time to kill after going to Watkins Glen, and so we found some shops in Corning and did some browsing. One was actually a glass shop where they made the glass on the premises. It was fascinating, but I couldn't find any fleur de lis.

Sunday evening we went out to this amazing restaurant called Suzanne's. I picked it out off the internet. We drove 40 miles up the lake in time for the sunset. I walked in the door and looked to the left, and the lone stained glass window was this picture below. It just felt like such a special gift to me.

Well, I was hopeful after seeing it that I might find some the next day, but when we got to the Corning Glass Museum, we were met at the door with the bad news that a transformer had blown and the Museum might be closed the rest of the day. I was bummed. We had planned to go to Ithaca for Matt to see the National Geological Museum there. That meant we wouldn't have time to come back--even to shop. I was tempted to be upset, but in the back of my mind I just had this sense that God had something up His sleeve. We made o90ur way to the museum, which was fairly small.
Afterwards, we had time for lunch. We happened upon the perfect place. Jean had mentioned that if we had a chance to get to Cornell that the grounds were beautiful and the weather was so nice I asked Matt if we could go so I could take some pictures. I found a couple religious buildings with some stained glass and took some pictures, but the glass wasn't very exciting. We were getting ready to pack up and Matt suggested we go see the clock tower. But just as we were nearing it we saw another chapel, with beautiful glass. We walked in and it truly took my breath away.

I started taking some pictures. We were all alone in the chapel for about two minutes, until a young man walked in, sat down at the organ and began to play. I'm guessing it was his practice time. The pipes lined the entire back wall of the chapel and we were seranaded with beautiful sacred music during our entire visit. I walked to front of the chapel and looked at the floor...
And I looked at the ceiling...

I looked all around me and saw these incredibly intricate tile creations. People, patterns and symbols were brought to life all along the front of the sanctuary. It was truly breathtaking.
I read a quote on a sign at a store where we were browsing that said, "Life is not measured by the moments that we breathe but by the moments that take our breath away." (anonymous)This was certainly one of them.

And Matt, I'm so glad I got to share it with you.