Half a day of work, a haircut, and then Halloween fun begins. Should be a nice day for trick or treating tonight, plus it’s a Friday. I’ll use my clicker counter again this year and report back.
Rachel’s bread making just gets better and better. Look at this perfect thing! It’s intended as a bread bowl but I’m just going to eat it with butter. Don’t tell her.
I wanted to learn a bit more about the archangel Raphael so I read the book of Tobit today, which I had not read before. What a wonderful story! Sparrow droppings and fish guts and even a dog!
The Jack o’lantern I carved today and the pumpkin painted by Darcy last week. Bring on Halloween!
Two years ago today, I made a trip to some family graveyards with the intention of facing some old trauma. That was an important trip for me, in hindsight. If a sign of forgiveness is that the memory of wrong remains but without the emotional charge, then that has been accomplished in me.
Universally beloved IU football coach Curt Cignetti just signed a massive new contract, one clause of which stipulates that if universally hated IU president Pamela Whitten is not in her job, Cignetti’s buyout is cut in half. Keeping her job by holding the football team hostage. Classy.
Finished reading: Angels in the Cellar: Notes from a French Vineyard by Peter Hahn. I cannot recommend this beautiful book highly enough. Every page was a joy to read. Special thanks to @JohnBrady for sending it to me.
The Householder
There is wisdom, even kindness, in concepts like “householder” and “laity.” Broadly speaking, these ideas represent an understanding that the capacities of someone devoted full-time to spiritual practice are very different from the capacities of someone with family and “worldly” responsibilities. I say there is kindness in these concepts; someone could just as easily see it as a spiritual caste system. That absolutely can be the case! Here, though, I want to emphasize the wisdom of these concepts in a time when they seem to have been forgotten.
If I had to, I think I could go the rest of my life with a boxed set of Fraiser, Lord of the Rings, and the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. 🎬
About to head out on a day trip full of visits to sacred sites and tending to the dead in family graveyards. The midpoint of the trip will be the Christ of the Ohio statue, which not enough people know about.