There are very few blank slates any more. Every available site is simply background for an ad. We have become so used to it that we accept that bus shelters offer some unusual thoughts—and images—, that clothing has its labels on the outside and that TV ads are less and less tasteful.

I will admit I was a bit startled the first time I walked into Port Authority bus terminal and found I was walking on advertising. Now I look forward to the changing messages.

I was recently in Penn Station for the first time since last spring. As I was leaving I was halted in my tracks. What was that? Quite simply, NesTEA has claimed the risers of the steps leading to 7th Avenue. Glimpsed from a distance it looked as if the travelers were climbing a billboard. Clever!

As a church we have learned that subway ads are effective. After all, we have to do something while we cling to our poles. The bus shelter ads appeal to the passing pedestrian as well as to the patient traveler inside. Handbags, totes, umbrellas (preferably when open), all sport logos or messages.

I suppose it was inevitable, given our national obsession both with exercising and multitasking. The days of great-grandma and grandpa, when the ordinary chores of farm work and household care offered enough muscle-bending to prevent obesity are forever gone. And so we have had to invent exercise equivalents.

The New York Times of September 18 illustrates the latest gift to exercise lovers. For those bored with the gym or unable to rise early enough to take advantage of its offerings, the treadmill has come to you!

An endocrinologist from the Mayo Clinic has constructed the first treadmill desk by uniting a hospital bedtray with a treadmill. Add your laptop, and the workwalker is all set to burn 100 to 130 calories an hour as he walks a leisurely 1.4 miles an hour at his work station.

It has already been crowded off the front pages of our papers by the newer catastrophes on Wall Street but it still defies the imagination. To see the piles of matchstick-like wood that once were homes, the concrete slabs that mark where houses stood, the total lack of foliage that makes what once was street seem like a moonscape—to see this makes it hard to say that this is Galveston.

I have a friend who lives there. Since I cannot contact him now, and since he is a prudent and intelligent person, I can only believe that he and his family are safe somewhere else in Texas.

I keep coming back to those piles of destruction that are all that is left of people's hopes and dreams, and I wonder how many lives have disappeared as their houses blew away. One official has said there will be no accurate count of the dead and missing until someone goes street by street and tries to locate each person who once lived there.

I was home on a rare afternoon during the US Open and I was channel surfing to find my favorite tennis players. As I passed through a soap opera, I was just in time to hear one character say slowly to another: "You don't have tomorrow."

I stopped. I was halted in my tracks by the sheer banality and truth of that remark. And I thought what it might be like if, for one day or perhaps even a part of a day, we lived in the present moment, as fully as possible.

"We look before and after, and sigh for what is not," lamented a poet. He is absolutely right. We are always looking ahead—is that why we carry planners wherever we go? And if we are not looking to tomorrow and tomorrow, we are looking back at what did not succeed and wondering why, or admiring our successes to offer self-congratulations. But how about the now?

We'd all like to be saints. It is just that the process is a bit difficult. From time to time I'd like to share a thought or two on it, and, as we travel together down life's road, we all might benefit.

Let's start with patience. In the great list of spiritual practices there is none quite so demanding as its exercise. It is definitely not a virtue of the modern world. No one today names a child Patience, although it was popular in the 18th century. The card game most of us call Solitaire is also known as Patience, probably for those who don't cheat to reach the desired end more quickly.

I thought about practicing it today as I caught sight of the subway platform, lined with the patiently waiting workers for that perennially slow R train. The lucky few sat; the rest of us stood, and we waited, more or less patiently. Does waiting impatiently spur on the process? Of course not, but it does give us something to do as we step to the edge of the platform, peer knowingly down the dark tracks, sigh gustily... you get the picture. We have all done it from time to time.

Labor Day! No matter what the weatherman says, this is the official end of summer and of that otherness which we all adopt, both mentally and physically. My apartment complex closes its outdoor pool. I gather up the detritus of my summer's activities, and the fall mode begins. In fact, I started early and, as I look at both the calendar and the remaining bits of my summer's activities, I wonder—did I really do all that?

I have travel printouts that assure me I took 11 different airplanes, multiple interstate buses and commuter trains (one trip alone merited seven different modes of transportation to get from here to there). No, I did not have a "staycation" as so many people did, enjoying the blessings of home as a response to the doubtful joys of travel.

I was on the road for 51 days in the past three months and I took my road mind with me. There is always something new to see and so to learn. I saw soybeans growing in Kentucky, admired roses in Texas, marveled at a herd of yaks in Colorado as well as the June snow of the Rockies beyond them, got caught in a cloudburst in New Jersey that flooded both the streets and my luggage, rode in a speedboat towing young water skiers on Lake Champlain... Yes, all this was a by-product of the retreats and workshops I gave across the country, and I learned as I went.

Tucked here and there in the Bible among genealogies and kingly displays of power are little gems of faith that shine all the more brightly for having to be excavated, as it were. One of my favorites is in 2 Chronicles 20.

Very briefly, it is the story of King Jehoshaphat of Judah who is depicted in this book much more favorably that he is in the Book of Kings. In this instance, an alliance of enemy armies is invading his kingdom from the south and he does not have the military wherewithal to repel them. It is that simple.

The people gather in the presence of the Lord, men women, and children. They pray: "We do not know what to do but our eyes are on you." An unknown prophet, Jahaziel, tells them not to be dismayed because the Lord is on their side.

Tucked away at the end of 1 Kings 9 are three little verses that describe the fact that King Solomon, among other accomplishments, had built a fleet of ships. This is totally out of character with the general biblical view of the sea whose unstable waves were untrustworthy and in whose depths lurked evil. One was not to venture upon the sea.

Whether there was some subliminal memory of the Great Flood or not, there were no sailors among our biblical forebears. Even Solomon, with all his zeal in building ships, was hard pressed to man them and had to rely on his father's good friend, Hiram of Tyre, for help in training the would-be sailors for this nascent merchant fleet.

Solomon's navy had a short life in the Red Sea. Even though it was part of his expansionist dreams and pleasing as were the goods which arrived from Ophir, it was hard to find men willing to trust their lives to the ever-changing sea. A century later King Jehoshaphat made another attempt to build a navy, but when his ships were wrecked, it was interpreted as the will of God opposing navies.

The dynastic difficulties of King David are finally settled in 1 Kings 1, by the old king choosing his successor before he dies. The drama is heightened because we have a split screen narrative: David is making his choice and one of his sons, Adonijah, is having a party to declare himself king. Each is ignorant of the other's actions.

David gets there first. He simply orders that the young Solomon, mounted on the king's own mule, is to be brought to Gihon and anointed there. It is a strange scene. The new king arrives on the royal animal to be anointed by both the priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan at the water source of Jerusalem.

We might wish to see a king ride proudly into Jerusalem on a horse, something nobler than a mule, but the significance should not be lost, or Palm Sunday also becomes meaningless.

Last week we briefly looked at David's sin. This week some of the consequences will be evident or, as the old proverb might say: "The chickens come home to roost."

David was an incredibly skillful king and a very poor father. Was it too many wives and too many half-brothers and sisters vying for a place in his favor? Each of his sons is caught up in carving out a place for himself, hopefully as heir to the throne since there was no clear line of succession.

No child was more loved by David than Absalom. His story can be found in 2 Samuel 13-19, a saga worthy of a prime-time special. Absalom was handsome, headstrong, walking by his own rules and ultimately a ruthless murderer of his half-brothers when he decided to seize power from his father.

However, there is an interesting tonsorial anecdote in this sad tale of an arrogant son.