Stories. Philip Roth and his short stories: I wonder if you know this story? Roth is said to have written sort of semi-autobiographically: I wonder, I'm curious how this story fits, or is it sheer imagination? Is Ozzie somehow Philip? IDK. If you bother to read the story, be sure to finish it, then pause for a few seconds, go back and get inside it, get inside the story, and ask and answer the question, "What happened then?" or "What happens next?" What now? See if the light comes on. Or is your answer that, "There cannot be an answer, because this is not history, it's not a report of something that happened that day at school, it's just a story, a short story"? Then use your imagination about the possibilities and likelihoods. The Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament, is a collection of stories, Heilsgeschichte, holy stories, short stories actually, tribal stories are sometimes called myths, that the Jews told about themselves and th

  November 2, All Souls Day, is commemorated in our church calendar as All Faithful Departed, but so downplayed that does not even have its own Collect for the Day or other Propers, which seems like a snub. I'm not close, but if I were close to a bank of votive candles, I'd light a candle for dead loved ones whom I hold in my heart, but I'll do that tomorrow morning as we arrive for the eight o'clock service.  Tradition and devotions for the day may include visits to graves of loved ones, and prayers, and maybe lovingly decorating graves with flowers. In the Roman Catholic Church, prayers for souls in purgatory, a place of purging sins until one is purified for entry into heaven. IDK, is there consciousness in purgatory? We don't "have" purgatory i n the Episcopal Church, b ut one fact is that nobody knows what happens to us at and after death, and another fact is that no amount of doctrine, dogma, or believing makes anything True anyway, and no amout of d