Even though I know that the dew covering the windows on my car will soon become frost, October, I’m glad you’re back.
You are my favorite month.
I don’t want you to leave.
I know when you depart, November moves me one step closer to winter.
Mentally, I fight winter.
While I still respect winter, I’ve lost my constant school boy hope and prayer for snow.
At 72, my old brain doesn’t revere snow anymore. That wish for snow is for our grandchildren and school teachers.
So October, I’m going to cherish you.
The last few days the harvest moon has been like a spotlight in the predawn western sky. Its brightness teasing as it hovers by church steeples and plays hide and seek descending behind tree lines.
To my west, cold fronts hurtle their northwest winds over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rushing east toward Richmond, these winds paint your sky with the clearest, bluest blue my eyes have ever seen. I want to daydream into that blue forever.
Although I dread my annual battle with your fallen leaves, I adore the palette of colors found in the bright sun against that blue sky backdrop.
Even though, my affection for today’s baseball is gone, October brings the world series. I remember sneaking my transistor radio and earplug into Miss Avery’s sixth grade class at Hillcrest Elementary School. She figured out that I was trying to listen to the world series. For some reason, she didn’t kill me.
And just to be fair, I can grumble about October too.
I whine about the retailers who thrust Christmas on us way too early. I couldn’t believe that even our neighborhood hardware store had a Christmas Sale display today.
And to continue the fairness, I will confess that I do not understand our increased fondness for Halloween. Yards throughout our neighborhood are transformed with all kinds of displays. I’m surprised someone hasn’t come up with a tacky Halloween tour like we have for tacky Christmas lights.
On a recent morning run, I turned off Horsepen Road and made a right on Devon. A few yards down the street two houses across from each other are decked out in Halloween gear. What caught my attention were the skeletons.
Each yard has an array of skeletons. Yet, my eyes were drawn to the high wire that stretches across the street from a tree in each yard. Skeletons in a variety of positions dangle from that high wire.
In particular, there is one skeleton that I really focused on. High above the yard, this skeleton is hanging by its fingertips. I wonder how many people I encounter on a daily basis who are hanging on by his or her fingertips?
I worry about those finger-tippers.
Unless we are completely oblivious, day to day living in this challenging world is tough.There is a tension that makes people more fragile, more vulnerable.
What really worries me about those finger-tippers is I might never know how close they are to letting go.
The constant barrage of discouraging news headlines makes me a pessimist at heart. I wonder when are we going to wake up? Perhaps that’s what keeps a bit of optimism—a bit of hope in my old heart. Hope that we will find our hearts again.
Maybe those finger-tippers can find some hope in October.
Maybe finding hope requires us to strip away the layers of hurt in our hearts like stripping layers of paint off on an old battered door.
Maybe that hope is in the October bloom of a camellia shrub.
Maybe that hope is the shiny red berries from a dogwood tree.
Maybe that hope is early morning sunlight coming through window shutters as it cast a pattern of light against a sanctuary wall.
Maybe that hope is you, me, we, us realizing that a finger-tipper is in close proximity.
Maybe that hope is you, me, we, us starting a conversation with the finger-tipper.
Bruce Springsteen said: “At the end of every hard day, people find some reason to believe.”
Maybe for finger-tippers, you, me, we, us, and October can become a reason to believe at the end of their hard day.
After all, 1 Thessalonians 4:18 states: “Therefore, encourage one another with these words.”
might be baloney 