Driving home through blessed and abundant fields of pink caramel corn stalks…brilliant copper red leaves fading in a snowy grey sky…through the magical orange corridor which is this quiet road; the maples are decked out in one hundred shades of amber and lush yellows, just waiting…hanging on for the first strong October gust which will send them all sailing on a thousand separate journeys.

J.S. Bach is on the radio…for all things beautiful remain forever…woven carefully into the DNA of the universe…friendship, family, the creation…the baby in the back of the car learning to speak the strange language that humans speak…only a brief photograph of all that is yet to come…

One of the finer points of balance in life is the ability to get many things done and done well, while at the same time having the energy and space to reflect deeply on what is being accomplished.

This leads one to a ‘theology of the kitchen’…the deeper meaning of laundry…the importance of placing carefully all the indoor plants in the right windows for maximum sunshine during the winter months…and the joy of listening to the last mowing sounds of the season…blessing the neighbor who keeps his lawn perfectly coiffed in a brilliant green checker board pattern.

These are small snippets of the world beyond this one. All are meaningful…

He gives me a great big hug, this chubby enthusiastic third grader. ‘Hey!’ he steps back and points at my sweater. ‘Did you get that from Marsha?’ I respond. ‘Marsha? Who is Marsha?’

‘You know…Marsha!’ He looks at me long and hard. ‘You smell like Marsha’. I think about this for a minute. ‘Marsha. Do you mean Marshalls…the store Marshalls?’ He continues to look at me. ‘Yes. Marsha. Did you go to Marsha’s?’

I respond. ‘Actually I got this sweater at Amazon’. ‘Huh’ he grunts. ‘Well, you smell like Marsha!’.

It’s a circular firing squad, this afternoon…

On this humid August day, the earth on a whim, draws her bath and the steam rises to the tops of buildings. The tub is full as meadows flood and the leaves await a new season’s future.

The air is grey cotton. The lush, black Turkish towels are trees bending strong and wet amid the flash of the earth’s mawkish and toothy grin…

‘Hey! Hey what? Eagles fans?’ There is motion and commotion and the man at one end of the bar grabs his wife and sidles down to the other end of the bar to meet…community. Two groups of people have found each other…lost in the gorgeous state of Maine…one from Toledo, Ohio…the other from…indecipherable. But they love, love the Eagles and the back thumping and high hand slapping proves it and adds to the general happy noise.

The big, overly muscled one with the beard, the one doing most of the yelling has done his level best to fit in…to be local. He wears a handsomely cut white linen shirt with fish…everywhere…woven into the fine fibers.

He’s about as ‘Maine’ as I am. Neither one of us has fished off a boat at 4am, neither gutted a fish…neither won out over the ravages of a real Nor’easter. We’re here for the fantastic seafood.

But we have all found the smallest of villages…here at the ocean’s edge…and these two groups up at the bar are seated tightly together at Boone’s, the bustling hustling corner where we are suddenly all from the gorgeous state of Maine…when it suits us…in August…before life summons us again to soldier on…

September grasses have faded. October remains inconclusive…one day warm, one day chilly as evening lights fade more quickly…bright orange, twilight orange, burnt ember orange…firelight and quiet.

The October road traveled is lighter, brighter and calmer since meeting you, my dear.

Carry on steadily in this well worn pattern of love, life and laughter…October gloaming…

I am thankful I grew up in a home where learning to read was as effortless as falling into a pile of leaves or diving into the deep end of the pool.

I wish the same experience for my students…

I am thankful for the sound of wild geese winging their way south in the early dawn. Their Creator speaks through instinct, season and muscle and they obey as we listen…

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

The oranges of October…all swirled together into a larger picture, tinted pink and copper; this thing we call life together. It is good and better and the best thus far.

And you shall eat raspberry and French apple pie and I shall arrange flowers…and the Harvest moon rises over this chilly October morning…as we travel on down the road…years and grace…

Baby Antonio was all gussied up for church this morning and then discovered…a stick of butter.

Take two…

Baby Antonio is rummaging through the kitchen drawers looking for items to put in the garden of Eden and on the tree of good and evil…clearly, Grandma is here…’you be Adam and I’ll be Eve’…

Apparently baby Antonio has run off with the baby Jesus from the creche because the little figurine is missing in action…

Antonio however, is very much in the action…

It was fierce. Someone yelled, ‘Hold on!’ And I was screaming and screaming…grabbing for you…for anything. The terrible crunching and crushing of metal on steel…of cement against frozen air and smashed rubber. And it was finished in a lifetime of seconds. Balanced against the bitter edge of a black iced bridge…one hundred feet above a frozen winter marsh…black waters.

And then I was out in the road and the thick and heavy alpaca blanket dragged and soaked in the slush and I thought it so odd that thousands of miles from here some animal had shed fur and thick hair so that we might be warm at that darkest, most bitter hour before dawn…the day I almost lost you. The day I almost lost me.

And now my soul…what now? The gaping hole of having been spared tells me it must be filled. Now what my soul? Now what my spirit…where to?