huzza and hallelujah

Our "GODbook Group" met this morning at Most Holy & Undivided -- we were officially looking at some of the work of Sarah Coakley...and midway through our gathering I became aware of something quite wonderful on an entirely different plane.

Unlike King David in his dotage, we "GAT HEAT" ... and that with a minimum of sinister clanking and hissing.

The new furnaces are on line and working!!!

And not before time, as there has been hard frost several nights in the hinterland.

Brilliant sunshine today, and a ceaseless screaming of blue jays. 'Tis autumn. All around the church all summer long the side streets are elm-tunnels...they've begun to turn gold. I'll try to get a picture. We Officially Believe that Prairie Metropolis harbors the last great disease-free stand of American Elms in the whole world -- about 60,000 of them perhaps? (This may be pure Urban Myth, of course.) There's that wonderful period just mid-autumn when the trees above are gold and the leaves they've shed all over the pavement are gold too. I'll try to take pics...

And as I was driving in one morning this week, along the alley, checking that nobody had come to a bad end in the hinter-space behind the church etc., I caught a little blur of movement on the wooden power-pole on the other side of the alley. Not one but two little downy woodpeckers spiralling around and around and around the pole seeking what they might devour. There was no traffic so I could stop the car and watch them. A spirit-lifting treat.

Not preaching tomorrow, speaking of spirit-lifting boons of one kind and another!!!

I think I'll tiptoe over a couple of blocks and see what's doin' at the farmers' market.