Amy Alznauer

“Perfect joy could not be joy alone but must be a joy that somehow contains our past grief and sadness and longing.”
― Amy Alznauer, Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship Shared in Letters

“There is one story about letters. A perpetually cheerful Frog pays a visit to Toad but finds Toad glum, sitting on his front porch.
"This is my sad time of day," says Toad, "when I wait for the mail to come."
"Why is that?" says Frog.
"No one has ever sent me a letter. My mailbox is always empty. That is why waiting for the mail is a sad time for me."
Then Frog and Toad sit "on the porch, feeling sad together."
Frog rescues the situation by running home, writing a letter to Toad, and sending it literally by snail mail. The little snail brings it four days later.
Even though Toad saw Frog every day, he longed for the strangeness, the otherness of a letter, for something to come from out there and address him, "Dear Toad." Is that the thrill I feel finding a letter from you in my box? The address of a friend is made into a physical fact and every letter an artifact of the otherwise invisible communion of friendship.”
― Amy Alznauer, Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship Shared in Letters