Just the other day I hauled our heavy scrapbook off the shelf here in New Zealand and leafed through a stack of pages displaying photos taken during the first few weeks of our meeting, in January 2001. Once the ink on these old photos glowed warm like the human heart but now that warmth of hue has faded from the paper. They seem almost weary.

In colours drained from our old photos, and in the faintest odour of must that clings now to each paper image, Time herself passes commentary upon our situation I see. Nothing however can conceal the enormity of our joy or the hope that shines fiercely and proudly in our eyes in those aging images.

How different the photos taken of us in 2009, rendered on brand new paper in bright shining hues ~ for now it is our hope, and not the ink, that is fading. Oh to be sure our love is still there ~ still burning through ~ that beautiful love that can never and will never be extinquished. But that hope that once shone so brightly in our eyes is less visible now, eroded by the near decade of intolerance and discrimination that lies behind us.

We of 2001 would have faced today ~ the day Obama delivers his keynote speech to the Human Rights Campaign dinner in Washington DC ~ with enormous anticipation. We of 2009 have lived this human rights injustice for long enough to sense the oncoming of yet more words devoid of actions and we grant it barely a sideways glance as Cas struggles alone with the failing health of two seriously ill parents and I sit half a world away, powerless and unable to comfort her.