And Now a Word from Our Sponsor

First of all, I want to apologize to my readers for the recent lack of posts. I have had no time to work on this lately for a mix of personal and work-related reasons. I work in politics, and this is prime time for us. It’s like working as a tax preparer the week leading up to April 15. You probably will not see posts in earnest as before until after this Tuesday.

This is a blog, not a diary, but I just wanted to say a few things. In today’s world, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. I know because I feel overwhelmed much of the time. We’re less than a week from an election that people on both sides seem to feel is of dire importance. I would say that the tension level of the average person is as high as I’ve seen it. We hear every day about people killing each other somewhere in the world, sometimes in our own cities. No matter if you’re candidate’s ten points up or ten points down, sometimes things can just seem hopeless. I received an e-mail today, in 2008, going on at length about how all of our problems in America are caused by “negroes” and arguing that we should send them back to Africa. It urged me to “pass this on to everyone you know!” And, to top it all off, tomorrow’s Halloween, and everyone I know is so busy preparing for the election on Tuesday that I have no plans. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a Halloween costume this year. So all in all, things seem pretty depressing.

What’s difficult to remember in all this is that we are here, on a planet full of dazzling love and beauty. Today when I walked to the bus stop, it was bitingly cold and the grass had all turned white overnight. The sky in the East was laced with lines of pink, a tone poem of color. And, as I walked, I watched flock after flock of birds fly out of the sunrise and over my head. They were huge, dense masses, with hundreds of birds packed tightly together. I’m not sure what species they were… they were very small, and beat their wings hard. And the last flock was the biggest. It stretched all the way across the sky from north to south. I watched it with my mouth open and my neck craned upward, until a car honked at me and I realized that the light had changed and I could cross the street.

And the greatest thing is, you never know when moments like that are going to come. I’ve found that when things look bleakest, the rays of sunshine stand out even more. Pleasant conversations with total strangers that you think about for hours afterward. An engrossing chapter of a book. A compliment from a friend. I think that there’s something in all this. I’m not a messiah or a great philosopher, and couldn’t tell you what, but we have to hold onto that something through everything else.

And, hey, if you’re a Phillies fan, and I know a few, you don’t need any of this. It can be easy to be jealous of someone else’s happiness, but sometimes it’s also good to get swept up in pure jubilation, whatever the source. A grown man running in from left field, jumping for joy like a little boy at accomplishing the dream of his life. We are here in a world where that happens every day, somewhere.

As a dying Rowena Allister might sternly order, “You… flowers.” “Watchers” fans will get that… I think they’re most of our readership, anyway. Anyway, I’ll see you all soon. Happy Halloween!