Ah, August.  As this most glorious month winds to its conclusion, I think occasionally of some words of writer Patricia Hampl.  In talking about her younger years, she asked, "Is this a happy childhood--the unfettered experience of the strangeness of existence, the pleasure of being caught up in the arms of creation?"

     In many ways, August evinces the "strangeness" of existence.  Its effusiveness of life belies its silent and underlying prelude to and anticipation of the coming autumnal "death."  But existence cannot be any other way.  Even Eden had days and nights.  We love the shimmering glow of August even as we may cower before what follows it.

     Yet August's demise is hardly cause for alarm.  It is rather a call to rejoice.  To rejoice in the incredible rhythms of a simultaneously strange and wondrous creation.  To rejoice in a creation which could only have been set into motion by an equally befuddling and wondrous God.

     That's the glory, that's the mystery.  And that's the vexation.  But would we really want it any other way?