Dear Reader:

No excuses! I got myself back to the closest ” little chapel in the woods” in Summerville-the outside early church service at my church Dorchester Presbyterian.

I woke up to low humidity and low seventies… maybe it was a ” Voice from the Wilderness” calling me but I threw my folding chair in the back seat and headed out. I had forgotten how serene and beautiful this small, intimate gathering was each Sunday.

We are such creatures of habit… once we get out of the routine of doing something … isn’t it easy to fill in the time with different ” routines” … until ‘ what once was’ becomes a distant memory.

The first hymn was ” Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies” ( under the category of ” Celebrating Time”) …as we sang the first verse it read ” Dayspring from on high be near…”

Well, you know me and words… I started trying to figure out what a ” Dayspring ” was? At the end of the service… I asked Anne… she re-read the line, shrugging but then predicted she would find out on today’s ” writing.” Old friends know us so well!

Dayspring was the earliest defining description of ” dawn” -the archaic predecessor to the word ” dawn” But it soon came to mean ( also) the beginning of a new era or order… even stages in our lives.

W. B. Yeats, upon writing about growing older, prosed ” It was the dayspring of their youth.” For many children today starting back to school -it truly is ” the dayspring of their youth.” One day so many of their childhood memories will center on school days and favorite teachers and new friends.

Yesterday was also the ” Blessings of the Back Packs” for students-and each one got a plastic bag tag to attach to their back pack.

So until tomorrow… ” Life is only as good as the people you get to share it with…” ( And little do these students know that some of these friends sharing their school day memories will also be a friend for life or a friend who appears when you need someone who knew you then…. who knew you when.)

Today is my favorite day -Winnie the Pooh

I decided this year to give each of my grandchildren a small holding cross that they can use to say prayers at night or in the morning before they leave for school… especially if the older ones have a test or a speech or anything that is troubling them -they can pray squeezing the little wooden cross to ease their anxiousness.

Remember the old joke that circulated over the debate about allowing prayer in school?

So true… but I had a great omen for this being a good year for students and teachers alike… my third moonflower bloomed last evening!!!