a prophetic voice-

Somehow, a sometimes-sultry September has slithered out the door and October has slipped in, bringing delightfully cooler temperatures, blue skies, chill breezes, and the tinge of color on the tips of trees, putting me in the mood for the tasks of making soup and applesauce and, perhaps, baking an apple pie. Isn't it strange how certain foods seem to go with certain seasons? How the palate just seems to yearn for a specific taste when the air cools and the nights lengthen? My heart leans toward "comfort foods" at this time of year...foods like baked or mashed white potatoes, baked sweet potatoes, meatloaf, liver with onions, oven-roasted veggies, and chili, leaving behind the lighter fare of summer, as "real" tomatoes and peaches disappear from the farmers' market, to be replaced by root vegetables and loads of apples. In many ways, Autumn is my favorite season, though it brings with it a certain melancholy, the fragrant, flagrant beauty of summer being gr...

For many in churches in the liturgical tradition, this time after Pentecost is known as "Ordinary Time"...paraments remain firmly green, the season unbroken by high holy days, and a certain sameness pervades the readings from scripture, as week after week we seem to focus on the same topics. Someone remarked to me last Sunday that it is getting kind of boring...like most of life, I think, where a sameness pervades daily existence and we have trouble seeing beyond it, often struggling to find some meaning in the daily chores and commitments, the trials and tasks which mark the sun's rising and setting. And yet...isn't that what a great deal of the spiritual journey is about? Relishing, reveling in the ordinary, the everyday? It is, after all, where we lives our lives- most of the time... and how much we let slip through our fingers if we can only enjoy and appreciate the highs, the mountaintop experiences. Life is lived mostly in the valleys and on the plains...and eve...