This missive is passionate and full of concern. It speaks with strain about problems in the world and in the church. It speaks of the transcendence of God and the dancing ministrations of the orders of heavenly hosts who aide us and lead us to cry, "Holy".

The feast of the Transfiguration comes as summer is just getting old. There is a gift that permeates everything even though the grass withers and the flower fades. This letter is about how faith comes to be.

Seeing clearly in the season of the long sun. Believing in the resurrection while there is tragedy and tyranny in our world. 

Early Spring on the prairies is ecstasy and agony. What can we learn from moss and from our mother Mary about how to live in the vicissitudes?

When fall turns to winter we turn inward and slow down but on the long edge between winter and spring we are restless and combustible. Is there wisdom in the catharsis of the festival of Carnival before Lent?

In the opening I say that this letter is an elegy to the cold. My mixing of ideas has brought in the feeling of mourning when I meant to praise. But perhaps my mistake points to a mixed truth. The cold puts us in discomfort, a trial we often lament, a hardship we want to end. However, with the intake of icy breath, the body calls us to attention, makes us ready for the end which is our beginning. 

In the midnight of the year a mirror finds the light there is to be found. Let it leap into the eyes of our hearts. 

We are in between times; Fall is on the threshold of Winter. This liminal time pushes us to ponder the relationship between the living and the dead, and our own life and our own death. We can trust the good earth to ground us, the saints to guide us, and God to surround us with witnesses to the magnetism of Divine love.

We lean into great trees and know the miracle of mercy with fingers on wood. Holy Cross day invites us to root down into the sustenance which makes us capable of the work of our lives. 

We are at the midday of the year, the Angelus bells are ringing and we are called to sit with the Virgin Mary as she enters her eternal rest. It is good.