Update

After the dreadful weather the last weekend of September and the beginning of the first week of October, we’ve had several days of bright blue sky and warmer temperatures. The weekend was simply mahvelous! Last evening, after dark, a nice rain moved in, and, although today is bright, with scattered clouds, it’s colder and very windy (no reading on the porch for me). WeatherBug says it’s 54 degrees with a wind chill of 52. The rest of the week looks like it will be changeable, with scattered showers and sunbreaks. Typical fall weather!

The trees around town have started changing colors, and there are some spectacular sights. Maybe I’ll remember to take my iPad and get some decent pictures of the really beautiful ones later this week, if only the wind doesn’t blow all the leaves off of them. We lost one of the big trees that line the drive onto campus last week in the storm last week, but, so far, the trees in the forest over the fence from my backyard seem to be holding their own.

Kudos to the Ducks for maintaining their place as #2 college football team in the nation with their game against Colorado. Unfortunately, the Cowboys were didn’t fare so well, although they were in it until the last play of the game. I was very impressed with U-Dub (that’s the University of Washington) against Stanford on Saturday night. They seem to be a real team this year, and the Ducks had better buckle down and try hard next week when they play them in Seattle. It’s the featured game of the week on ESPN next Saturday. ESPN will be bringing Game Day to town, and the excitement is running high.

About the only excitement for us last week was a Lunch Bunch trip to Silk Thai. I wrote a guest post for the Franke Tobey Jones blog about it, but so far it hasn’t been published. I’ll let you know when it finally pops up.

We talked about DESPAIR in Sunday School yesterday, and we’ll be talking about it for the next several weeks. We’ll be looking at Biblical references to despair (think Job), and we’ll be using Kathleen Norris’s Acedia and Me to explore further. We’ll be looking at acedia as containing depression but being different. In one episode of West Wing, Josiah Bartlett says “There’s a Korean word, Han. I looked it up. There is no literal English translation, it’s a state of mind, of soul really. A sadness. A sadness so deep no tears will come, and yet still, there’s hope.” I think that’s what we’re looking at. What is the Christian response to that existential angst?

I’m trying not to bore y’all with my thoughts on the idiots in Washington, DC., but it’s never far from my mind. Lord in your mercy…