[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Monday, August 26, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day to you all.  Well, here in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. after several days of relatively pleasant temperatures, both in the morning and even in the daytime, we're back to several days at least of more typical summer weather.  Now I don't know about other people, but I personally enjoyed those days and especially the mornings when I could take my daily walks around the block and interact with a small family of pit bulls.  Now don't call me brave or anything like that.  I asked their owner if they were the biting kind, and he said they were not.  However, I'm aware of the fact that at any day they could turn on someone and make a meal out of an arm, leg or some other body appendage.  However, so far they've not done that to me except this morning to lick peanut butter off my fingers.  Now, call me foolhardy or something like that, but I just really like those doggies.

And now let's get to the business at hand.  A person named Lansing Christman, someone I've never heard of before, invites us to enter his/her world with a short article entitled "Country Chronicle," rendered as follows:

August is a month that makes me feel at home and at ease, whether I am in my own hills or far up in the mountains or at the shore of a lake somewhere.  I make them mine while I am among them, for they are a part of God's plan in the universe.

Something about August seems so serene, perhaps because it is the culmination of both spring and summer, a phase of the year that leads on into September and an autumn of maturity.  It sweeps me on into a period of complacency that finds no equal in the coming and going of the seasons.

I look at the natural world, and wherever I look there is beauty in the bloom.  Look at the loveliness of the cardinal flower with its scarlet blooms along the banks of streams and swamps and swales.  The gold of the dogger in the thickets and goldenrod is almost everywhere, accented with the plumes of the wild clematis, the purple of Joe-Pye weed.  Meanwhile, the stitchwort sews the hummocks together.

One of the fascinating features of this time of year is watching huge flocks of barn swallows gather on the utility lines, long rows of them, gathering together for their early departure for Argentina or Costa Rica, their home for the winter.  They do not seem to linger long once they rear their young; they are ready now to bring their season to a twittering close.

Walk out into the hot, dry fields where the grasshoppers are.  Listen to the rasping of the cicada in the torrid heart of day.  Listen to the soothing sounds of the crickets and tree frogs and katydids as evening comes.

August days are mellow and placid; they are all I need to line my face with smiles and touch my heart with song!

And there you have an article, obviously written by a nature lover.  As I read and wrote it, I couldn't help but think of a dear lady on one or possibly more of these lists who also enjoys nature.  We all know her affectionately as Auntie Nan.  Perhaps you of all who read this can appreciate what this author is visualizing in words.  Anyway I hope that you and all the others enjoyed reading it, and apologies to you in Australia and New Zealand for the wrong time of the year.  Maybe when it comes to our February, you can write us a similar story when we're in the throes of winter, at least for most of us.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul