Even before you can discern the purpose of this stamp, the sparkling blue and brilliant red of its features, fenced by a geometric arch, fetch the heart! The Høhe Tåstrup Station commemorated in by Denmark in 1986 is a train station 15KM from Copenhagen. Train stations across the world have done well by the architects that design them. In turn, we who visit — from us train-impoverished American tourists from the land of automobiles, to the European and Asian commuters for whom such spaces are literally quotidian — can’t help but be flagged and found illuminated by those high ceilings, transcendent light, and urgent pace. Transcendenthas facets of definition – it means several things, but the version I call on is that “of God, existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe.”
Stepping from the train station onto the train is a portal into yet more expansive moments. I dwell on rich memories of train riding across Europe for work in earlier chapters of my life, with the sweetest feelings of independence, perspective, and gratitude unfolding in my heart as the landscape rolled out the window. Several weeks ago we had the joy of watching our 15month old experience and voice this same exhilaration, as we sped across a short span of Norway’s landscape — her chirps and chippers exactly in tune with the joyful child in our all of our train-appreciating hearts.