Turning...
The days and nights are turning toward autumn. All the maple trees in the area are taking on that that fiery yellow and red look that will yield soon to a rust glow. This is a time of the year to live for, to wait for. The harvest from summer's growth is coming in from dry, dusty fields. Pumpkins are stacked a long country roads, waiting to be purchased, carved, and placed in front of homes and on porches up and down the the streets of towns that are learning the Fall afternoon shadows one more time.
We drove to Carbondale, Pennsylvania, on Thursday to visit a optical plastics manufacturing firm. Fascinating how they make those lenses in my glasses. On the way, we stopped in Milton, Pennsylvania, at a food processor. Acres of cooking pasta and meatballs floating in a tomato sauce. The ride in between was through a sunny Pennsylvania countryside. We drove in the convertible, with the top up, of course. No need to freeze. Noses, like dogs, in the wind, we charged across the still-warm and dappled land.
It was hard to imagine that on that Thursday sad funerals for four young, innocent Amish girls were taking place just a few miles below our pleasant drive across Pennsylvania on highway I-80. A fifth girl girl had her funeral on Friday. Their murders prove, once again, that there is evil in the world. But, go figure, the response of the Amish, as they almost immediately forgave the murderer and comforted his family, proves again that there is, equally at times, grace in the world. I have almost no words of explanation or in response to both the evil and grace that are part of our world.
From CNN:
Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, said local people were trying to follow Jesus' teachings in dealing with the "terrible hurt."
"I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts," he told CNN.
Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, told The Associated Press that the victims' families will be sustained by their faith.
"We think it was God's plan, and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going," he told AP. "A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors."
Last night the moon was full and bright. You could read by it.
Last month was a harvest moon, but its splendor was not quite visible here due to cloud conditions. So this month's moon, often called the Hunter's Moon because it bathes the ground with so much light as to help hunters, is most welcome. Traditionally, it was a feast day in parts of
western Europe and among some
Native American tribes, called simply the Feast of the Hunter's Moon.
This is the time of the Chinese Moon Festival, too. The Moon Festival is full of legendary stories. Legend says that Chang Er flew to the moon, where she has lived ever since. You might see her dancing on the moon during the Moon Festival. The Moon Festival is also an occasion for family reunions. When the full moon rises, families get together to watch the full moon, eat moon cakes, and sing moon poems.
The Moon Festival is also a romantic one. A perfect night for the festival is if it is a quiet night without a silk of cloud and with a little mild breeze from the sea. Lovers spend such a romatic night together tasting the delicious moon cake with some wine while watching the full moon. Even for a couple who can't be together, they can still enjoy the night by watching the moon at the same time so it seems that they are together at that hour.
Will a moon so bright ever arise again?
Drink a cupful of wine and ask of the sky.
I don't know where the palace gate of heaven is,
Or even the year in which tonight slips by.
I want to return riding the whirl-wind! But I
Feel afraid that this heaven of jasper and jade
Lets in the cold, its palaces rear so high.
I shall get up and dance with my own shadow.
From life endured among men how far a cry!
-- Pu suan tzu, 1037-1101
In Chinese:
Still early yet. Coffee soon.
