It is an odd time to write Sunday Passage..between the weeks...between the stories, but this is the moment that I have chosen to write.

Before we start I want to share with you a poem I recently found in a new book publication..True Notebooks by Mark Salzman.

...we would assume that what it was we meant

would have been listed in some book set down beyond the sky's far reaches, if at all there was a purpose here. But now I think the purpose lives in us and that we fall

into an error if we do not keep
our own notebook of the way we came,
how the sleet stung, or how a wandering bird cried at the window....

Loren Eiseley

Leaving school late tonight I was greeted with a darkened Autumn sky with clouds as black as smokestacks. The air had chilled and I caught my breath at the startling beauty. Leaves had gathered on my windshield and one caught on my wipers....stubbornly holding on to the last of it's beauty. Isn't that how we live? Holding on to that which we can't seem to let go of as we stumble through each day. Time has slipped out of my grasp this Autumn...days filled with endless chores and work...night hovers with deep quietness. I sit with my winter hiking socks and long sleeved sweatshirts as I have still refused to turn on the heat..refusing to give in to the coming of winter.

Last week end was the 18th Hoosier Storytelling Festival. I have missed only two festivals since the beginning. I remember the first one I attended. I was shy and scared about calling myself a Storyteller. It seemed (and still
is) so sacred to me. I sat in the back of each tent absorbing stories as someone starved for literature and, I think, for friendships of those who shared my thoughts, philosophies, expression of living. Those who were all strangers to me have become close friends, and I look forward to the week end as we put up tents and chairs and share the Hoosier stage with storytellers around the country. Last week end was golden...leaves falling all around the tents and
blowing across the tops...shadow and sunlight. I can never sit in a storytelling
tent in the Autumn without thinking of David Novak telling stories. It was late in the day (many years ago), the wind had picked up and the Autumn leaves were cascading and swirling in every corner as he recited:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the thins of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though world of wanwood leafmeal lie:
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no or mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Spring and Fall
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Only one year did my children attend with me...oh, that they were young again and we could travel through books and stories...carve our pumpkins..make cider and apple butter...knit mittens by the fire. I miss those events...I miss them. It is my children I mourn for on this evening.

Life changes.

Tomorrow I will board a plane to visit Philip. He is hosting an open house for his beloved Miss Aliph's. Family and friends will attend to bestow blessings on him and wish him many years of happiness in his new home. It is a day to share with him, and I will be there.

Until I return, keep the knitting basket close, fill the old crocks with apples of gold and scarlet..whisper softly...for night is coming.

Love to all,

Lou Ann