It does not take long for evergreen trees to begin appearing just before Halloween. It seems that department stores and malls waste very little time...as soon as the air begins to cool down and become crisp...plastic and real evergreen forests begin to appear in our lives. As a child, I would look forward to the scent of the tree coming out of its attic-bound boxes. It meant Christmas was coming. I enjoy Christmas trees, the lights and ornaments. I prefer trees that have family ornaments that carry cherished memories adorning them. The perfectly trimmed and color coordinated trees can also capture the light of the season. Be it perfectly coiffed, eclectic, or even a tree fit for Charlie Brow
Not random acts of kindness. Those are well, too random. These are deliberate acts of living a life rich in faith.
I always struggle - struggle deeply - with Veterans Day and church side by side. My grandfather was a veteran of World War II, serving in the Pacific at the end of the war during the occupation of Japan. He never really spoke much about the time he spent there - he would talk about the pretty ladies he met when he went out (he was not married yet), about the mischief he would get into...the uncoupling of train cars and sending them down hills...but not much about what he did in his role as a US soldier. After watching his response to the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan - I still remember his face - I could understand why he did not talk much. He never really pushed for me to consider a
Trees prepare us for fall. They subtly, slowly, change their leaf colors from green to yellow to orange to red. Leaves fall to the ground slowly, on their own, or nudged by the gentle breezes or the weight of raindrops gathering on them. Ginko trees, however, tease us. Their leaves remain green, with no sign that they recognize it's fall. Until ginko dump day. Within 24 hours a ginko tree will go from green to yellow to bare, leaving a thick blanket of yellow leaves on the driveway, street, and yards. All the ginko trees in the same area seem to dump on the same day. The date varies from year to year, but trust me, sometime within the next ten days it will happen. There is no preparation, o
