Oktober Sky

Yesterday we were down in Phoenixville for its first annual Oktoberfest. The beer and food were wonderful. The day started out chilly and rainy but then it turned into a fine afternoon. Sunny and cool, the rain past, with a gentle breeze. In other words, it feels like the fever has broken here in Eastern Pennsylvania. Fall, though late, is officially in gear.

I remember I was about 12 years old and me and my brothers, dad, uncle, and assorted cousins climbed Bear Mountain in New York. I was a fairly athletic kid and I was ahead of everyone on the way down so I decided to plop down in some Fall leaves and peer into the changing season sky until everyone else caught up. It was quite peaceful. I recall that I thought to myself that "I will never forget this sight." I am not certain why it made such an impression on the plate of my mind. Yet, it is quite true that I am very fond of Fall. It is my favorite reason and I particularly like the blueness of the sky coupled with the changing of the leaves.

I also remember my rowdy cousin on the way up pretending to jump off the side of the mountain, laughing maniacally. He had scouted the spot and seen a smaller patch of grass to land on below before the drop, as he cackled, holding onto a little tree that kept him from falling over into the abyss. 

Blue to me signifies peace. Peace is a precious commodity. Worth more than pearls. I have been reading old school devotionals from hundreds of years ago and the writer made the comment that "God's people can be in the storm but the storm is not in them."  Outward circumstances can be stormy but the inward soul can be a blue sky.

Post-Script

As I have just finished reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, the main character Tom of course, exhibits peace in very trying and abusive circumstances at the hand of a sadistic master.  Harriet Beecher Stowe in this novel does not shy away from calling out the South's Christianity sanctioning slavery and giving it shelter.

She also seems to critique how the faith made slaves docile and servile under the hand of cruel slave-holding masters. Hence the pejorative term of calling a black man, who's religious devotion doesn't/didn't challenge white systemic racism, an"Uncle Tom." But Tom does challenge his awful master when he refuses to do his dirty and brutish business of whipping other slaves for their perceived impudence. For this, he loses his temporal life. I suppose the moral of the story depends on whether one believes in eternal life and judgment. The Sweet By-and-By or a Lie.

I can see why Lincoln told Stowe something along the lines of  "So this is the little lady who started this great war."  Stowe brought slavery out of the shadows and exposed it to the sky, to the light of consciences of her readers who could no longer pretend that permitting slavery was in general the legitimate way of the greater lording it rightly over the lesser. The rule of the powerful over the weaker, the laws of nature and Nature's God.  Biblical Christianity and orthodoxy suffered because of this all to true association.