Today's photo is for my car buff buddies. During the years that I lived there, Springfield, Illinois was a mecca for automobile enthusiasts. It seemed that every fall weekend there was a gathering somewhere in the city. I was most enthralled by the two weekends in September when the entire downtown area was blocked off and the streets were filled with hundreds of cars and trucks. I would walk around for hours and dream and hear "car" music in my head. And sometimes I even felt like a teenager again.

We started with fat crayons, almost as big around as our fingers. It was long before we would have a box of 64 slender crayons with a sharpener built right into the bottom of the box. We just had eight big fat crayons: red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange, brown, and black. With those eight colors, we could draw pictures all day long: green grass and blue skies and yellow sun and black dogs and brown trees and purple umbrellas and orange trucks. But red was my favorite color: red hats and red cars and red roofs and red birds and red flowers and red signs and red cabooses. Red is still my favorite.

I have a plan that I have yet to fulfill. I want to start in the north, around Lake Superior, and just follow the progress of the fall colors as it moves south. I wonder if I could be in the right places for the peak color. Once in a while I'm lucky as this photo of West Virginia shows.

I think it would be fun. Anyone want to go with me?

Make a careful examination of this picture. This tree grows on top of a rock pillar on the shore of Lake Superior in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Through wind and water erosion, all of the surrounding rock has disappeared, leaving this tree on top. And just to the left are several sizable roots that stretch to a place where the tree can receive nourishment. This popular attraction on Lake Superior may even be in "Ripley's Believe It or Not" for all I know. A seed took root a long time ago in far different circumstances and grew into a tree that is dependent upon its lifeline. How long will it survive this way?

I think it's kind of a fun image that reveals that we do not live alone. We need to be connected to thrive.

The Gospel lesson for today is Matthew 22:15-22 and tells of a time when Jesus was asked by opposing groups (Pharisees and Herodians) if one should pay taxes to the emperor Caesar. If he says "yes", he offends the Pharisees who hate all that the Romans symbolize, and if he answers "no", he will be reported as a traitor by the Herodians who collaborate with the emperor. So he asks for a coin and further inquires whose image and title is on the coin. The crowd responds that it is Caesar, the emperor. Then Jesus answers, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give God what is God's." The query is not resolved because the riddle is extended with an implicit question: what belongs to God?

The question is enormous. I met this boy in Monrovia, Liberia in February, 2008. If he is alive, he is at the edge of young adulthood. If I knew his name then, I do not remember it now. I have this photo framed in my study. I see him staring back at me every day. He belongs to God as I do, made in the image of God as I am. When I ponder the dangers of Ebola and poverty and violence and malaria and hunger and ignorance, I realize that he is in more peril than I. Some voices say his life is not as valuable as those of us who have money in our pockets. And though he lives outside our borders, he belongs to God. We all do.

I was on a photo tour and the group was all photographing a barn to the east of us when I was interrupted by a tree that shouted to me. I turned around and saw the scene below. I moved over to another vantage point to be interested in a wholly different subject. The tree was in bright sunlight while the hill behind was in a combination of clouds and sun. I like how the angle of the hill in the foreground matches the angle of the hill in the background. As I look at it some more, I think I might crop the upper portion of the image but including the sunlit slope. And maybe not.

I have to tell you what this is because there are not enough visual clues to help one decipher it, and what there is present is likely confusing. It is an old railroad wheel that was cast in Marshall, Texas. There is some kind of colorful algae growing on the metal surface. The wheel appears to have been in this location for some years. If I had photographed the entire wheel, I dare say that all or most could correctly identify it. But focusing on just a portion that has colors and details that one would not expect adds mystery.

This stairway looked ancient and I felt more secure climbing the stairs than descending them. The proprietor invited us into his store which seemed to have as much of its share of junk as it did treasures. He was difficult to understand, his voice low, the sentences he spoke rambled. But he was proud of the art within, artists of the Ozarks from nearly 100 years ago. The prices were too high for us, even if we saw something we might have liked. And then he opened an old trunk and began to show drawings of a nude woman that he claimed was the wife of the historic artist. Who was this person that he talked incessantly about and whose art, sculpture and paintings, dominated the two buildings of his "collection"? We looked up the name on the internet later, Louis Freund, and found that indeed the artist was a prolific, well-known artist of the area. But why was it here and who was the shop keeper? Maybe it was Mr. Freund himself and we had entered a time warp down a side street in Eureka Springs.