From a bit of a distance, I can see the leaves on the highest branches of the Autumn Blaze Maple in our backyard catching fire as they stretch upward into the cool, early fall sky here in Southern Ontario. Sitting indoors, though, in the comfortable spot where I spend the early moments of my day in quiet reflection, I can only see a third of the tree at most, and only a solitary branch of red against the backdrop shades of green. But even a third of something beautiful is enough to inspire someone who happens to be paying attention, and so, one day last summer, I snapped a quick photo from this same vantage point when our tree was still in the fullness of its summer glory. When we moved into our current home seventeen years ago, there was a small and rather unimpressive Ivory Silk Lilac in the back corner of the yard, but nothing else to provide our growing young family with any kind of shade. This made for plenty of hot summer days in the backyard with no relief from the heat and humi...
"As a novelist no less than as a teacher, I try not to stack the deck unduly but always let doubt and darkness have their say along with faith and hope, not just because it is good apologetics - woe to him who tries to make it look simple and easy - but because to do it any other way would be to be less than true to the elements of doubt and darkness that exist in myself no less than in others." - Frederick Buechner, Now and Then