from Cal Thomas.

lost their job yesterday one of those things where they pack you out that day with your stuff in a box and no explanations left behind.

I knew who it was, a competent employee but an unhappy soul with personal skills like gravel in the gears. I know what its like, too, to have that conversation where a boss somewhere tells you that you don’t fit into the plan, or the future, or whatever is next and today is the end. Whether you think it’s coming or not there’s still no good way to walk out of a building with your personal life in a cardboard box.

And in these times there may be no going back. It’s not like the days when you could get dropped from one place and scooped up by another and sometimes even do better then before. Now you wait with a hundred others, people younger, people cheaper, people better prepared, and hope you can elbow someone out of the way and avoid getting the skinny envelope from HR.

Two things cross my mind at this moment. I feel sad for yesterday’s unemployed. This morning when he wakes up and the day is just filled with hours he either starts to see the horizon or starts to see the living room walls. From what I know of him it may be the walls. Selfishly, of course, I think of myself, simultaneously glad that it wasn’t me and dreading the day it could be. What would I do? Where would I go? How would I feel? Having made it through before could I do it again?

If not for faith, who knows?

how strong spider webs are until you try to hose them off your house. Tis the end of summer and the clean up begins.

and with it the summer begins its departure. The daylight is already shorter, the temperatures cooler, and children are thinking of school.

The older I get the more the charm of winter fades but autumn has retained its hold on me. The heat of the summer disappears yet warmth remains. The days are shorter but the colors compensate for it in their vibrancy. September is the best of months, the only one I wish would last the year. October has its moments, the month when you can wear your best sweaters, but then the long wait begins.

Darkness settles, snow falls, the cold descends and refuses to loosen its grip until some time in March when life again will not be denied. We hibernate, if not in fact at least in spirit, our horizons constrained by the chill just outside our doors. The only sign of hope is the calendar on our wall, a tropical scene for each month, a reminder that somewhere what is all around us is not all there is.

But this morning is sunny and cool, the best kind of day and I’ll store each and every one of these days in my soul like a battery to power me through the night to come. It’s time to be outside, to move freely, to absorb the sun, and take care of chores. It is the season of drawing all things together so that spring, when it comes, will find a remaining spark of life, an ember that its gentle winds can once again restore to flame.

why the Orthodox church is so firm on proper order and decorum in worship. The video below is of a “clown mass” and yes its real and while its extreme it’s an example of what can happen when people decide the Liturgy is about them and not about God and abandon the time tested forms.

to be in the area of LaCrosse, WI, today or Saturday consider dropping in to our first annual Rummage Sale at the Church. Like they say, one person’s trash is another’s treasure (although we’ve taken care to not have actual trash in our sale).

On August 18th the Vikings signed Brett Favre. The next two days were marked by tornadoes and torrential rain in the Twin Cities. Coincidence? I think not!

so are the days of our lives. I just received an email from an old acquaintance in high school who announced that she’s going to be a grandmother.