Unexpected pleasures

Last week I took a friend of mine, who is recuperating from surgery, outdoors in her wheelchair every day for a jaunt around our property. The timing was good, as early fall days were still sunny in the afternoons. One of the unexpected pleasures of these hours was the daily variations that we saw, even though we took the same basic path every day.

Here are two of Thursdays sights: the colias plant is an off-shoot of the one I planted last summer. This one grew twice as tall and is flowering! What a delightful surprise.

The second one is not really the bunny per se, but how close it let us come before scampering away. 

In our four-season climate these autumn days are special as we all know that everything we are seeing now will soon be disappearing for a few months, as winter sets in. Hope you're enjoying your October, too.

 

An excerpt from a prayer we are adding to our Evening Prayer everyday  this month.

Prayer for Leadership

Give us, O God, leaders whose hearts are large enough

to match the breadth of our own souls

and give us souls strong enough

to follow leaders of vision and wisdom.

  

Give us the hearts to choose the leaders

who will work with other leaders

to bring safety to the whole world.

 

Give us leaders who lead this nation to virtue

without seeking to impose our kind of virtue

on the virtue of others.

 

Give us a government that provides for the advancement

of this country without taking resources from others

to achieve it.

 

We trust you, Great God, to open our hearts

to learn from those to whom you speak in different tongues

and to respect the life and words

of those to whom you entrusted

the good of other parts of this globe.

 

We beg you, Great God, give us the vision as a people

to know where global leadership truly lies, to pursue it diligently,

to require it to protect human rights for everyone everywhere.

 Amen