“A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest) since I last noticed this same commotion.   Who knew God was an abstract expressionist?  I’m asking myself—the very question I asked last year, staring out at this array of racing colors-the out-of-control Virginia creeper my friends say I should do something about, whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper. God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen.  He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade is actually a fairly detailed outline.  It’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him, its palms and fingers crimson with applause, that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem.”

by Jacqueline Osherow