This morning's Liturgy of the Hours readings are about St. Monica, who was St. Augustine's mother. In St. Augustine's Confessions he quoted his mother: "I did have one reason for wanting to live a little longer: to see you become a Catholic Christian before I died. God has lavished his gifts on me in that respect, for I know that you have even renounced earthly happiness to be his servant. So what am I doing here?"

Monica's purpose was to bring her son, through prayer, to the Lord. What better thing can a parent do than to pray a child into the Kingdom?

We talked with Danny yesterday and learned that everyone is OK. Fr. Marc reports on his blog that they lost a few banana trees, but that these kind of trees are fragile anyway. We thank God for his grace. Hurricane Dean took a turn south and spared Jamaica a direct hit. Prayer is a wonderful thing. We don't always get what we ask for - Dean could have wiped everything out. But it didn't, and for that we are grateful. However, we are to be thankful in everything, no matter the outcome of our prayers. In the end, it is God's will that must be done. You can check out Fr. Marc's comments on http://freethekids.org.

We are watching closely as Hurricane Dean moves toward Haiti, where our son Danny is working in an orphanage. We talked with him last night and have been looking at the orphanage's web site - http://freethekids.org - to see the latest updates. As I write this on Saturday afternoon the hurricane is getting close to Les Cayes.

May God protect the children and staff at the orphanage and all the folks in the area.

Today is the last day of Vacation Bible School, and it has been a great week! The kids have been great - Shelley Reynolds and her staff have done a bang-up job. We are planning an old-fashioned Southern dinner with fried chicken, slow-cooked green beans, corn, etc. Pies and other goodies for dessert. This summer has been flying by fast, a sign of a busy time. God is so good, and I am grateful for all that he is doing in our church and in the church in the Mid-Hudson Valley.

Time in as interesting thing, if it can actually be called a thing. When I was a child, the age of twelve was significant. Don't really know why. And thirteen - that is when I became a teenager. When I became sixteen I could drive! And then at eighteen I could buy beer. Little did I know how much of a problem alcohol would become for me. At twenty-one I am a bone fide adult (or so they say.) Back then no one trusted anybody over the age of thirty, so that was an age I wanted to avoid, except for the alternative to not seeing thirty! And on it goes. Now that I am sixty-two age looks quite a bit different.

Before I came to Clintondale I never stayed in one place more than four years - except for my growing up days, and then it was short stays - maybe six and eight years in Greensboro and High Point, respectively. Tomorrow marks twenty-one years. I have friends who have lived all their lives (to this point!) in one place, college excluded. Having been in Clintondale for twenty-one years I feel grounded, like I have a home, a place to be.

In May, 2001 my wife and I bought a little house in Oak Hill, NY, up in Greene County. In fact, that is where I am making this entry today. We look out our front windows and see the northern edge of the Catskill Mountains. Oak Hill, like Clintondale, is a small unincorporated hamlet. It boasted quite a little population back in the nineteenth century - not large, but having a barber, doctor, some stores, an ice cream parlor, a malleable iron factory, some farms. Then toward the end of the nineteenth century on up to the recent past, it went downhill. Many of the buildings in the hamlet became run down. Recently people like us have been buying and moving in. Oak Hill seems to be on the upswing.

Time takes its toll, but only if we let it. Time also builds up, but only if we let it. God has given us places and people to love and nurture and see grow. Clintondale and Oak Hill are both places where God has allowed me and my wife to have community and peace and joy. We've been married for twenty-six years, time well-spent indeed.