MATTERS AT HAND: Autumn brings good works and some hard questions

Well, it's fall, officially, beginning this week.

The turn from summer into fall is perhaps the most significant transition in the year. Fall is the time when our attention shifts from ourselves (lake, lawn and garden) to our communities (school, church, community).

This occurred to me last week, when I passed a sign advertising the fall dinner at St. Timothy's Catholic Church in Manvel, N.D., which is going on today.

There are so many ways that our concern for each other manifests itself in this season.

The United Way campaign kicked off last week. This year, United Way hopes to raise $1 million to support a wide range of programs in Grand Forks.

Today, the women of Sharon Lutheran Church begin making lefse. They'll sell this Norwegian delicacy (well, you have to add a little butter and a little sugar) to support their church activities.

On Saturday morning, members of the Grand Forks Rotary Club used Sharon Lutheran's kitchen to make kuchen. We'll sell this German specialty at the pancake breakfast that's been part of Potato Bowl for so many years that no one knows for sure how many. Proceeds will go to Rotary projects in Grand Forks, all of them helping make the community a better place.

Potato Bowl, of course, is much more than the Rotary Club's breakfast. There's a parade, a football game and an array of associated activities.

These are projects that I know about. Some I am involved in personally, such as Rotary. Some involve friends and colleagues. Some I've seen only on signs by the road.

Of course, there are many more.

With us, autumn is the season of caring.

Why?

It must be because there is in each of us a kind of primal fear of what lies ahead.

Winter.

The time of cold. The time of shortage. The time of potential want.

We know this in our bones, and we organize to face it -- not as individuals, but as communities.

This so important that it shouldn't have to be written, spoken, or even thought about.

But how to do this exactly, how to organize as communities, is at the core of our politics. Indeed, it is the crux of our current national dilemma.

This became apparent last week, when Republican presidential candidates gathered for still another of their campaign debates. The debates turned on the question that confronts us every fall: How do we care for others less fortunate than we? How do we help one another face the coming winter?

Aging is the winter that we all face.

That's what makes Social Security such a powerful issue in our politics. How do we prepare ourselves for aging? How do we provide for others? Can we pay for our own preparations? Can we pay for others?

These are the questions that have arisen during Republican presidential candidates' debates this season, sometimes is very poignant ways.

Candidate Ron Paul suggested, in last week's debate, that churches should provide for a comatose individual facing the end of his life.

How much lefse? How many kuchen would it take to make such a thing possible?

Of course, that is why government is an agent in these issues. Government is the way we organize ourselves to deal with the really big issues because government is the entity large enough, with enough resources to deal with them.

Private charity is important. Vital even. But it can never be enough. Bake sales? Fall dinners? Raffles? Community fund drives?

These activities are vital, but they cannot meet every need. Instead, such local efforts supplement the things we do together on a grand scale -- a national scale.

This is worth remembering at this time of year, when so much of our activity is directed at preparing ourselves and our communities for hard times coming.

Winter is a metaphor for want.

No government program can eliminate want altogether. Nor can any local charity.

Today's most urgent political question is how to organize our response, for ourselves as individuals, of course, but also for our communities and our country.