Hello from the end of fall, beginning of winter. Our temps have been in the 30’s and it won’t get much better until next spring, I’m afraid. We’ve been working in the yard to get everything put away for winter and the snow shovels out and ready for action. We wait for the stillness of winter, a time to reflect and relax, even with the busy holidays coming soon. Thanksgiving is two weeks from tomorrow and Christmas is but four weeks after. Oh, and the paper mentioned this morning that in one week, Alaska will have its last sunset of 2008.
If winter is slumber and spring is birth and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It is a time when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth has closed up the drapes on another year and it’s time to reflect on what’s come before. Mitchell Burgess
Although glad for the grain, we areAware of the husk.And winter closes on us like a shroud. - Philip Larkin
This is an odd time for Deb and me. When she doesn’t feel well, she suspects the worse possible causes. Of course she does. My guess is that anyone in similar circumstances would feel the same, have the same fears. But it does fray our otherwise ebullient nature.
The psychology of this time for us is interesting to me, certainly a lay person without any special knowledge, but to see Deb question the very value of her life in reflection of her almost fifty years on planet Earth. What legacy will she have and what mark had she made in the lives of those family members and friends who have known her best?
We see ourselves as merely a tiny dot on the time line of forever, our coming and going causing not even a ripple and becoming a footnote in the family tree within a generation or two.
The real truth is that we know, with a certainty beyond words, our purpose here isn’t to invent a wonder drug or be famous or infamous, as the case may be, but to be the best friend, spouse, sibling, aunt or daughter possible, completing the task we were designed for at the creation of the universe.
So often I’ve compared my life to those others that I see as significant during my life, with the feeling that I’ve fallen short in my potential. Sort of weighed in the balance and found wanting, to coin a phrase. If only it were that simple. Some day, not here of course, we will finally see what our life has meant to others. What word spoken without thinking changed a life, what smile or hug, in a fleeting moment, given without thought, brought unusual joy to someone who desperately needed a lift just then.
So, we continue to pray for guidance, asking that we be given opportunities to help and love others. So they may know someone cares very much. For as we were created in the image of God, we pray that we emulate his love and caring in this sometimes unloving and uncaring world we live in.
May all who visit us here give thanks for the bounty we enjoy in America and celebrate the birth of a child over two thousand years ago who changed the world.
God Bless.
