For half a year, my Christian broadcasters have asked me to Pray for the Election. We started off last winter, praying each Thursday at noon. Now, this schedule was hard enough to remember, but after the primaries, it ramped up to every day at noon. Now it’s 30 days of ongoing prayer prior to the election.

The common image of a senior retiree features someone rocking gently on a sunny porch while holding a tall glass of lemonade. At arm’s length is a stack of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and several magazines or novels. In the distance, another retiree is climbing into an RV with fishing poles and scooters strapped to the back. Nothing could be farther from the truth for most Southwest Virginia retirees.

A giant wooly worm chased Paul Brewster from his garden. 
“I was gathering green tomatoes,” said Paul.  “Nothing I like better than fried green tomatoes rolled in corn meal.  Suddenly, a big wooly worm came toward me at 90 steps per inch.”
“You scare too easily,” said Beck, my ole Missouri mule.  “That critter probably was training for the wooly worm race at Banner Elk later this month.”

On Sept. 13 at the Rural Retreat Fairgrounds, I participated in a free tour of the Messiah’s Mansion, a series of five tents that served as an attempt to replicate the Mosaic Sanctuary that God asked Moses to build during biblical times.  The conception of this life-size model sanctuary was the brainchild of Clayton Leinnewebber, who successfully executed his idea of combining lessons of the Gospel message and the plan of salvation with authentic-looking visual aids.  These include detailed symbols such as sanctuary furniture and models of ritualistic garments and jewelry that were likely to have been worn by citizens and religious leaders of the time.  Each of the details was designed to represent the events that would later occur such as the birth, baptism, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

I consider myself a “green.” I recycle anything I can.  I re-use plastic bags from Kroger as trash can liners.  I save those dark blue plastic bags from the liquor store and take them back to be refilled.  I figure, the more plastic bags that I recycle, the fewer plastic trees that need to be cut down. 

“The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow,” William Blake once wrote, “nor the lion the horse, how he shall take his prey.”

Nor the tree the human standing there, looking up at awe at something that doesn’t know awe from an early frost.  There’s something to be said for detachment. 

I’d driven by them for weeks, watching fruit ripen on old trees growing in odd patches of land where modern civilization intersects with the past.  I was tempted at times to park the car on the side of a road and try to pick one.  But I didn’t, no matter how handsome these apples were.

It’s gotten to be something of a routine. I plunge some sharp object – Sunday night it was a knife – into some part of my body – Sunday night it was the webbing between my thumb and pointer finger. By now I know when it needs stitches, when it needs a band-aid and when it needs to be ignored, because you know sometimes bleeding appendages will stop bleeding if you just pay them no mind. A few weeks ago the same spot on the same hand got laid open with a hatchet. Yes, a hatchet, and yes I was being reasonably careful, but obviously not quite careful enough. It required a couple days of band-aid therapy. I knew that one was minor, after I made quite sure my thumb was still there, still working and still willing to help grab things like hatchets to fling through the air in pain-induced rages.
Sunday I knew without looking that stitches would be a requirement. When a knife slides through skin to the hilt, if pocketknives can be said to have a hilt, you can be pretty sure stitches will be required. The prospect of reconstructive nerve surgery crossed my mind.

I once heard about a wealthy man who was dying. While his life was full of many good things, including a wife and children, money meant the most to him. So important was this man’s wealth, he convinced himself he could do the impossible and take it with him.

It is October and officially autumn. To paraphrase Charles Dickens’ opening of “A Tale of Two Cities,” it is the best of times, it is the worst of times; it is the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness.

Should politics and faith mix?