Summer has returned to Little Egypt. It is 84 degrees and feels like 88. Eighty-eight is forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday. Last week I was wearing a light sweater and now short sleeves are in order. In Maine, two weeks ago it was primarily short sleeve weather. The crispness of fall will come again…and none too soon.

I remember sitting in the Orpheum Theatre in Eldorado, Illinois and hearing the film projector that screened the movie on large reels from one to another. The projector would make the most interesting and comforting of sounds by clicking of the sound of ‘flick’ as each of the individual photos were whisked across the bright light of the projector at such a rapid rate that what I saw on the screen had then illusion of motion. There were even cases of subliminal suggestion that occurred from time to time. This would be done by, say, an advertiser splicing a photo of their product on one or two frames. Such as while you are watching a western you see a momentary shot of a beautiful Coca-Cola and suddenly you must go to the lobby and purchase a coke. Or perhaps you are watching television and a frame of film suggests to ‘Smoke Marlboro Cigarettes’ and you suddenly want to try Marlboros.

Life is a bit like a movie. The photos of our days whisk by with the flick of the master projector. First we are young…and then we are middle aged…and then we are old. We travel our road of life as we had planned until we are deterred by a subliminal suggestion. At times they are good suggestions…but often they are suggestions that have an agenda that benefits the person that is making the suggestion. We are in a selling world. Have you ever had an old friend call you and express their desire to renew old acquaintance…and to discuss a business plan that they have or a product that they are shilling for? How many of you friendships are transactional?

Wonderful people pass away and before long few people remember them or know of their life. I have witnessed on numerous occasions the death of good and hard working human beings who once they were buried and current family and friends had left this mortal soil…the next generation know little if anything about them. Now that is not the most extraordinary element of our flickering film of life…as it is somewhat customary for the daily rhythms of the life that surrounded the deceased to be altered in the extreme…once they are no longer around. Our earthly journey back to Jerusalem is not about permanence of placement…it is about the journey and who you helped along the way.