I love an excellent book. No wind, wiring, password or government can steal the gift of literacy. In the most dire of circumstances I can throw an old favorite into a shoulder bag and in time be transported to places and ideas and worlds far from the never ending wave of electricity and emails.

Don’t look for me.

I am under a bridge with a candle, reading Proust.

I am old enough to recognize the astounding miracle which is modern technology. I am young enough to know that with God, nothing…nothing is impossible.

As I hurtle along a dark road covered with forestation a thousand years old, listening to music written hundreds of years earlier by minds and hands long deceased, spinning on a magical paper thin disk created by minds greater than mine…I sneeze the same sneezes, consider the same skies and plot the same plans made by all who have passed this way.

I have no power save that which is given me, no life other than what is breathed into me, no hope other than the mighty hand of God.

For all this…I am thankful.

Let me tell you a story. Only, it isn’t a story. Let me tell you the truth.

At 8:30 this morning, I engage a distraught first grader; spinning on the floor, raging, yelling in the corner, throwing trash on the floor. I hold him, talk to him, stroke his head and ask if he won’t try to be good for me; just for a while. He nods and explodes again as I leave.

At 9:00, an unpredictable, wild fourth grader I know, bounds through the doors, gives me a huge hug saying, ‘Oh, you’re working on main idea, details…right?’ He leaps and spins away and I call after him, ‘You’re looking as handsome as ever!’ ‘Thanks!’ he yells and disappears down the empty hallway.

Minutes later he is racing around, tipping over garbage, shrieking. At 9:40 I have a rather disconnected conversation with another fourth grader; a silent and strange boy. ‘I’ve been out because I have a new dog’, he offers. I know this is not true. I smile. He looks up. ‘Do you know that there is a red planet?’ ‘Mars?’ I respond. ‘No’. He shakes his head. He is silent. He looks at me. ‘Like the future when cars can fly?’ He stares at me. I say, ‘Maybe. I don’t know’. He looks away. After awhile he says quietly, ‘I wish that were now’.

This is a small corner of my day in my school. This is our city and her streets. This is a snapshot of our nation. We are suffering moral and societal and spiritual bankruptcy. For God’s love we don’t need more laws. We need healing of the highest order.

I am thankful for Sunday. I embrace Sabbath…the concept of complete rest every seventh day. I am thankful to be permitted by God to rest on Sunday from all of the following: politics, 24 hour a day analysis, foul language from so called ‘artists’, the sale of piles of Halloween candy and treats, the beginning barrage of Christmas advertising, loud music, laundry, leftovers, mediocrity in education and a hyper, maniacal culture speeding us ever forward toward exhaustion’s next cliff. Not today…

I am thankful for autumn rain, for clean wool blankets and for the quiet daily commute to work; moving silence is lovely.

On a chilly, grey Monday morning…I am thankful for the hope of Friday, the comforts of the weekend’s promise and the consistency of the seven day cycle in which we move…

I am thankful for a furnace which kicks on, a coffee pot brewing magically in the wee hours of the morning, a comfortable chair, an endless stack of books…

Oh versatile winds and talented gales; carry on in your seasonal way while we shudder and scramble for the woolen blanket, the forgotten sweater, the knitted cap.

Caught off guard and balanced precariously between Canada’s border and the fickle Great Lakes…commence to hunker down as the sunshine is brightly colder…

I am thankful for rain laden roads which glimmer in the black dawn, leading me around the gentle bend in the river to work.

I am thankful for those same roads carrying me back through small towns and under a cold sky which hangs over caramel fields; home to the one I love…

We are here…and you are not; I watch all the rose and caramel dappled skies drifting lovely above the road winding to the city…and feel the glory of late October winds.

I’m looking for something else; something solid like the grasp of your hand and the black, bristled shoe brush and the whisked sound of you polishing my Sunday shoes; swish swish…back and forth…

I want my Mary Janes back. I want that time back. I’ll take October’s glory instead, only because I must.

Smokey orange-tangerine and cream shimmery candles…the oven is exercised and heated with cranberry, pumpkin and strong chocolate. Friends are coming.

There is hot butter-cream coffee and I am already headed home in my heart; down that rain soaked highway, leaf strewn toward the cove where I am most vested, most truly myself…forever safe…