My first actual memory of Halloween is dressing up like Casper the friendly ghost for a costume party that I went to with my family.  If I still had that costume today, I'm sure I could sell it as "vintage" on EBay!

My brother and sister experimented with cross-dressing at that party; Bob going as a woman and Becky dressing as a man.  Neither said a word the whole night and no one figured out who they were until they revealed their identities!  I think they won a prize.

To my knowledge, that was their only experience as transvestites and neither suffered any lasting scars from a fun evening.  The actual location of the Halloween party was at an Assembly of God Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  This may seem surprising due to the fact that the AG's are more fundamentalist in their beliefs than United Methodists (it was before we became United Methodist).

Many churches denounce Halloween as an evil that creeps into the mainstream consciousness.  They look at the emphasis on black magic and witches and equate it with devil worship.  Kids can get sucked into a life of evil by all kinds of ways.  It just might start with wearing a Harry Potter costume.

I do beleive that you can go overboard on anything.  However, it seems to me that the symptoms would be there long before Halloween arrived.  If it wasn't Halloween that pushed you over the edge, it would likely be something else.

The church has tried to appropriate Halloween just as it has done for many pagan holidays.  Over a thousand years ago, the church moved All Hallows Eve or All Saints Day to November 1st which was the time that Samhain, a pagan holiday honoring the dead, was observed.  It survived by later evolving into Halloween.

We still celebrate All Saint's Day on the first Sunday in November each year.  During this worship service, we honor those church members who have passed away in the last year by reading their names and lighting a candle for them.  So Halloween may have survived the church but we have picked up a tradition that many find comforting.  All Saint's Day certainly speaks to our faith in the resurrection.

So have a safe and happy Halloween!  And don't take your costuming too seriously but have fun with it!  And remember those who have passed away in this last year and how they have influenced your life for the better.

I've been shocked to see one of the lead stories around the entertainment industry to be how fat Eva Longoria from "Desperate Housewives" has become.

Thinking that she must have really let herself go, I followed the story to discover that she gained a whopping 7 lbs.  While responding to questions about possibly being pregnant, she told a French TV show recently that she "was just fat."  All of this while still maintaining a size 0.

Which leads me to wonder if my 7 year old daughter has any chance at being comfortable with her body type over the next few years.

It seems to me that most people would not find anything wrong with Eva's figure.  However, if it makes internet headlines as well as all the gossip-shows about the latest stars, I wonder how much this kind of nonsense seeps into our subconscious?

Last year, supermodel turned talk-show host Tyra Banks also dealt with the tabloids making a story about her weight gain by talking about it on her show.

Because of differing body frames, some people are going to carry more weight.  Some will have trouble gaining weight.  Having a slender figure is not so much a problem for women today but it would have been if you lived in the Renaissance Period where a more fleshly figure was in vogue. 

I do believe that we should be healthy.  Watching what and how much we eat is a good thing as well as getting plenty of exercise.  However, body types will vary and we don't need to set up impossible standards for our children.  Beauty is so subjective to the dominant culture and changes over time.  So maybe we should be happier with how God made us and see the beauty in all people.

I remember the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

                                                                                                   Matthew 6:25, NRSV

Darwin, our 1/2 German Shepherd, 1/2 Black Lab mix died on Sunday morning, October 5th.  He would have been 11 years old next month.  In his prime, he weighed about 100 lbs so he lived a good long life considering his size.

We got Dar when we lived in Drummond and he allowed Sheryl and I to practice our parenting on him before we had children.  As a puppy, he learned to fetch early on, retrieving the newspaper which was as big as he was! 

When he first learned to do this, our neighbor, Jim Bryant, said that he saw Dar come racing out of the house and onto the driveway.  He was afraid that Darwin was going to run right into the street (HIghway 132) and be killed.  Jim couldn't believe it when he stopped and grabbed the paper and started back toward the house!

Our other neighbor in Drummond was the pastor of First Baptist Church there and evidently didn't care for our dog's name.  One day he was asking me, "What's your dog's name again?  Satan?  Lucifer?"

"Darwin," I corrected him.

"Oh yeah, I knew it was something like that."

Anyway, we settled on Darwin because of Charles Darwin's theory of Natural Selection.  We thought for his size, that he would be a fit dog compared to others.  Ironically, Darwin never sired any offspring since we had him neutered.

Kyla and David certainly loved Dar after they came along.  He "protected" them whenever they went into the back yard by circling the perimeter endlessly when they were out there.  I think he saw it as his duty to the family.

Darwin's favorite time was going to our land in Stillwater.  He would find many things to chase and often brought box turtles to us (well, we would take them from him when he brought them up).  Once when we looked to see what he would do with it, he buried it!

He dug a whole and then tamped down dirt and leaves with his nose.  It was amazing because if you didn't see it, you wouldn't have known it was there!  Of course, we rescued the poor reptile!

On Monday, we drove him out to the land and buried him overlooking the pond.  We planted a tree there in his memory.

We'll miss our friend and companion.  Pets hold a special place in our hearts.  Darwin, we love you - rest in peace.