Feeling overly emotional today . . . on this November 1st. Perhaps because it’s All Saints Day. Or maybe because neither Roger nor I remembered he was on-call today (third weekend in a row – for the bonus round!) until well after last night’s football game. Imagine how HE felt at learning around midnight that he’d have to work today, starting at 6 a.m.! We’d planned a family work day at home today, beginning with outside winterizing like trimming trees and weeding flower beds, in preparation of “pansy/viola-planting” (my favorite flower b/c they are “happy”). Surely, it can’t be because the most important part of that darn announcement got edited out or that I couldn’t find the timely words (before the mid-term election) yet again for another article about the sad state of affairs in our country!

This is our second year to host the Williams family Thanksgiving gathering and a fair amount of preparation is required (I can’t even think about the inside of the house, yikes!). I agree with Southern Living magazine that Fall IS the South’s best season – I offer today in central Texas as evidence. It’s clear and the air is crisp, ripe with the sights and sounds of autumn. We awoke to temps in the 40s with the high expected near 70 degrees. I’ve always felt more “connected” to the world around me this time of year – likely why I chose to get married in October and honeymoon on the East Coast when fall foliage is in all its glory. My how twenty years flies!

Roger recently texted me this picture of a poster he spotted at work. It’s a quote from Mother Teresa, probably the most-noted of the modern day saints. I love what is says – words to live by – a sort of “how-to” for sainthood or “right-living”; the standard of right being the natural standard or what the Founding Fathers termed “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence. I love what the poster says but I love it more that Roger saw it, knew it would move me, and took the time to forward it.

It also reminds me of something I recently read in my favorite Lincoln book (so far). Lincoln was a “Clay man” – an admirer and follower of Henry Clay, author of the Missouri Comprise, which had as its purpose to phase out slavery by restricting its expansion into the new territories. Clay had known the Founding Fathers personally and he seemed to Lincoln the natural guardian of their great traditions. What Lincoln said of Clay applied also to himself: “He loved his country warmly, because it was his home; but he loved it even more because it was a free country.” Similar sentiments were echoed when Benjamin Franklin said: “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.” These early statesmen and model patriots sacrificed and served America because of the higher ideal she embodied and hopefully still does.