Our good friends, Mike and Marcia, always help us see the most interesting places when we visit them in Door County, Wisconsin. But I was perplexed when Marcia said we were going to a cemetery. Pastors spend a lot of time in cemeteries, and I don't usually visit them when on a vacation (Can you have a vacation when you are retired?). "There's a tombstone I want you to see, it's over here." And then the mystery deepened. Three names on this creative marker: a man and woman, each who lived to be nearly 100, and a younger man who died nearly the same time. But who made this marker, with shells, and broken pottery, and engraved rocks. It was something to see.

The Gospel lesson today is Mark 10:46-52, about Bartimaeus, a blind man who is restored to sight by Jesus. Bartimaeus could only beg, until he could miraculously see. There's more to ponder in the passage and the surrounding stories, if you can see.