Feeling Autumnal

--The Red Vinyard at Arles, Van Gogh

October

And kingdoms rise
And kingdoms fall
But you go on
--October, U2

Tea and toasted, buttered currant buns
Can't compensate for lack of sun,
Because the summer's all gone
--The Kinks, Autumn Almanac

All things on earth point home in old October:
sailors to sea,travellers to walls and fences,
hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds,
the lover to the love he has forsaken
--Thomas Wolfe
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Happy Sunday, Ranger readers.

Lisa would like to resurrect the Sunday homily series, even if only for an occasional run. It will be an all-denomination feature. A virtual Unitarian - Universalist Ranger church, plus some. Every point of view will be considered, except maybe Southern Baptist. Now soliciting possible topics for next week's sermon. (A personality inventory once concluded I was best suited to be a reverend or a dental hygienist -- go figure.)

Now, a wise poem to a child by Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins for the beginning of Autumn, my favorite season:

Spring and Fall

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Enjoy this beautiful day.