Dwell on These Things ~ Second Monday of Advent

This is a picture of my oldest and youngest (at the time) granddaughters about three years ago when the oldest was about 17. In Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton says that when a person has been raised as a Christian, even if he has lost his faith, "for him there will always be some savour of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby . . ." I think that holds true for this picture, too.

To see all of the posts in the this series, click HERE.

AMDG

Halfway

As of Sunday, we are officially over halfway on our pilgrimage to our parish. We walked 1.9 miles Sunday for a grand total of 9.3 miles out of 15. Not much by most standards but for someone who could only walk for ten minutes at a time a couple of months ago, this is pretty good. The picture above shows our stopping point. We have now reached a U.S. highway which is in parts wider than anyplace we've been before and compared with the roads we've passed is a veritable business hub, although there's a long empty space, too. Very soon we will pass a Walmart and know that we have truly reached the big city, population 8124 as of July 2011.

I mentioned before that we pray when we pass cemeteries. This is Magnolia Cemetery, but it's hard to read because the letters are hidden in a pine tree, which doesn't seem quite right. In fact, I don't think I see any magnolias there.

Here is the railroad that was just about at the 1.5 mile mark.

Our granddaughter Tessa, she of the beautiful smoke picture and the great snake adventure, walked with us, which was really nice.

Bill wears that orange hat so people can see him. Tessa just has her hair.

This was a nice-ish sort of place we passed along the way.

Nice-ish but out of focus.

Just as Bill left us to drive the car down to the end of the road, a pack of dogs came up over the side of the road opposite us. It is always thus. These things happen during the longest possible time Bill will be away from us. I was more concerned with sneaking past them quietly than taking a picture, but they looked fairly friendly. When we drove past them on the way back, I saw that they had puppies down below, so I'm glad the mother decided we were far enough away for them to be safe.

So, there you have it. I'm really eager to get back out and continue down the road.The funny thing about fractions is that it takes forever to get halfway, but we should reach the 2/3 point on the next walk. This is exciting! We can only make our pilgrimage on weekends because by the time we get home, it's too dark, so we have to walk closer to work. 

Of course, when we get to our parish, we have to turn around and walk from our parish to another church where I go to Mass occasionally, and then another, and another. But that's another story.

St. James, pray for us.

AMDG

Earlier I typed daughter instead of granddaughter when talking about Tess, but she is, of course, the latter.