Before I was ordained a Deacon in the summer of 1982, I had attended the annual gathering of Methodists only once. So I was unfamiliar with the traditions. And I had never heard of All Saints' Day. But I have come to cherish the rituals and traditions of the church. Two hymns are traditionally sung at the Annual Conference: a Charles Wesley hymn often sung at the beginning, "And Are We Yet Alive", and "For All the Saints" commonly chosen for the memorial service as we remember those who have died during the past year.

My memory is full of those dear ones who have gone on before me. Each year my congregations lit candles and recited the names of members and friends who had died the preceding year. And we sang. One hymn became precious to me.

The third verse of Natalie Sleeth's "Hymn of Promise"

"In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity; in our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity. In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see."

Old Car City in White, Georgia is on the agenda today. I think Judy is going to find something else to do besides roaming around 34 acres with 4,000 cars in a junkyard, looking for photographs. I cannot imagine why she wouldn't want to do this!

This shot is from an earlier trip to a salvage yard. Actually I think this is kind of intriguing. All in the eye of the beholder?

You may have seen the photo I posted earlier of Madeline and her parents, all dressed as blue jellyfish. This is Maddy. I celebrate my kids this day who join in the costume fun with their kid. Nothing scary or gruesome. Inventive, creative. Maddy enjoyed what looked like blue jellyfish in the Chattanooga Aquarium that we visited this summer. I love that she is inquisitive. And happy. I pray that she will always be. And how I wish it to be true for all of the children of the world.

The maple tree next to my driveway was beautiful this week. And yesterday began to drop its leaves to the ground.

Actually, there are four that line the driveway. But this one is the most spectacular. It would have been amazing if they had all been the same variety and this color of red. But the traffic to gawk at our leaves on our dead-end road would have clogged what traffic there is.

Too many times I have gone on a fall photo trip in hopes of the ideal fall picture in the perfect conditions. But it is not so easy. I've arrived too early for peak colors or I have been in the ideal spot a week too late. It has rained. The wind has howled like a gale, the kind that sunk the Edmund Fitzgerald. I've been too tired sometimes even to see it, right in front of my face.

But I have learned to stop, look, take a deep breath, and enjoy. Put the camera up to your eye, or place it on the tripod. Compose. Click the shutter. And do it again. And do it all again next year. And forget about the ideal and the perfect. And just photograph what you see. Ain't it amazing! And aren't you glad!

This is Door County, Wisconsin. With my good friend, Mike Eischen standing right next to me. That's perfect.

Unlike the diverse, vegetation-covered hills and mountains of Tennessee, the largely naked mountains of Colorado have evergreen and aspen trees. If you can catch them at the right time, the contrast between green and yellow trees and blue skies can be spectacular. And fortunately, there are an abundance of places where one can get a broad overlook of the expanse. This photo is above Georgetown, west of Denver. By the way, there's a great scenic train here that we have ridden twice (although not recently). A wide angle lens proves useful to take this kind of photograph. I used a 24-70 zoom, set at 35 mm.

I know that this is not much of a photo. At least, it's not up to my usual standards. But I was caught by this scene, and felt that the setting had something to teach me. I have been known to take photos of paint on brick walls. I like to catch the hint of an era that has gone by, but not vanished. The evidence has been left behind. I saw this wall and wanted to photograph the large sign on the side of this building. But there was no vantage point where I could get an unobstructed view of the sign. But some things are so recognizable that you don't have to see all of it to know what it is. Silhouettes can be so familiar that the thing or person is identified even in dim light. An old television show, "Name That Tune" challenged the contestants to guess correctly the song with just a few first notes. As an adolescent I could at night tell you the make and year of an automobile just by the shape and number of the taillights. When we have a strong sense of familiarity, our senses fill in what is not there. Some thing may be obscured, but it is not hidden. So we don't have to photograph the whole thing, but can recognize just by the swoop and arc of the letters that this is an old Coca Cola sign.

We drove to the edge of Eureka Springs, Arkansas to see this church. It sits in the woods at the end of a narrow, winding road. It is a remarkable building. From outside, it is tall, but narrow; squeezed in among the trees. I had seen photos of this award-winning building for years. Night photos are especially fantastic. We might as well go inside.

Photographs are permissible inside the building as long as the photographer is seated. The building seems constructed of glass and matchsticks. The vertical timbers, little more than 2x4 inch boards, seem much too small to be of any significant support for the building. I thought this a fascinating sanctuary where the outside environment would be distracting to the congregation. Sermons are rarely remembered anyway. The stories last a little while and the jokes are told for a week or more. What can a preacher say that will compete with what's outside?

The Gospel passage for today, Matthew 22:34-46, is the concluding series of questions put to Jesus by the religious authorities. "What is the greatest commandment in the law?" (At the time, there were 613). Jesus responds "Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself." The answer is both simple and profound at the same time. There is nothing here about proper doctrines, or extensive theologies, or ethical debates. The sermon is brief. Invited in to love God and invited outside to love all. There are no walls when it comes to God, and no inside and no outside.