The ending of the month of October and the start of November provides us with an interesting time. In church circles, this is the time of the celebration of All Souls’ and All Saints’ days, those days when we honor those who have passed on into eternity, the time when we speak of the veil between this world and the next as being very thin. On these days we remember that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses…..those who have informed and shaped out lives, those who have given birth to us, accompanied us on life’s path, mentored us.

But these celebrations are not what I refer to today. I am thinking about how, nearly every other year, we have a convergence of Halloween, the World Series and a political election. This year the intersection of these events has been quite interesting to me.   As Halloween has taken on nearly the magnitude of Christmas in the amount of dollars spent for decorations and costumes, it is difficult to ignore its cultural presence. Make no mistake, I would never want to ignore it.  People,children and adults alike, dress up to be someone or something other than who they truly are. I don’t know about others but I found this distraction welcome in the barrage of negative and vitriolic political ads tossed my way with mind-bending speed. Carving pumpkins, decorating our house for the two and half hours of trick-or-treating, amassing large amounts of chocolate seemed a gift in the midst of it all.

Given the fact that the Twins did not make it to the World Series, I was not glued to the television as I might have been. But I found myself switching channels to check in every now and then, watching what seemed like a motley crew that made up the San Francisco Giants. I found myself rooting for them and their opportunity to win a prize that had not been theirs in decades. Those underdogs get my heart, and my allegiance, every time. Between baseball,miniature chocolate bars and the promise of being enchanted by small goblins, I found myself soothed. No matter what the political meanness might dish up, in the end, we would survive.

I did, however, entertain a fantasy. What if, instead of hurling truths and untruths toward one another, the candidates were made to play a game, like baseball, for instance? What if, to win the election, they actually had to decide who might be the best pitcher, cool and calm under pressure? Who might be most likely to knock the ball over the wall? Slide on their stomach to catch a wildly flying pop up? In other words, what if they, without partisanship, all decided to act as if they were all on the same team working for the good of everyone? What if they finished their big win by giving credit to all the players who made their job look easy, who supported them with loud cheers as they rounded the bases for a home run? What if they remembered that not one individual could make the game happen but that it took everyone, everyone, everyone to do what needs to be done? What if, at the end of it all, they could all run together into an enormous heap and do one of those big group hugs of jubilation, their faces full of all the childhood dreams come true in a single moment?

It is a fantasy, I know. But every now and then I just have to don my Pollyanna costume and dream big. Dream big and reach into the left over candy for another tiny Snickers.