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what the parson found

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What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground. Ninety is different. Not necessarily for everyone, speak for yourself, I'm speaking for me. Different from eighty-something. I'm experiencing, tasting, licking one finger and holding it up to the wind to judge whether the math is fun and good at ninety, the polls are closed but the votes are not all counted, and there's a one-hoss-shay sense about it, not so instant and total a pile of dust, but all of a sudden pieces are falling off.  Despite hearing aids, the hearing is harder, I need a trip to the audiologist. There's a right eye problem: ointment for the Time gap until surgery early December; the doctor said the cataracts too but I said No, Not At Ninety and he said I Understand. CHF only goes one way, so a new echocardiogram next Wednesday. A nose issue: dermatology surgery the end of next week.  A late afternoon in...
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USS Pierre (LCS 38)

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  USS Pierre (LCS 38)  entering port for commissioning here, 1:30 today.
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Voice

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  Yesterday, Wednesday, was a taste of Hell, perhaps as a way of preparing me for the moment when St Peter pulls the lever that opens the trap door I'm standing on and drops me into The Abyss, eh? Leaving home at seven:thirty, with a detour by the doctor's office to pick up a replacement order form, a couple hours' wait at the diagnostic center; then to Golden Corral for very late breakfast while they are clearing and shifting to lunchTime; then to another appointment from eleven:thirty to one:thirty; home for a few minutes, then at two:thirty off to a three o'clock doctor appointment that I finally got ushered in at five o'clock and finished about six:thirty; then the drive home in traffic and absolute pitch black darkness; arriving home about seven. For a nonagenarian male and late-octogenarian female who in extreme old age need to do One Thing a day, the Hell was the length of the day capped off by driving home in the darkness. There was a song, "Life gits t...
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Tuesday

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Dick Cheney dies, age 84. A mediocre college student (don't worry about it, there were lots of us, most of us made it through life anyway), he matured into a gutsy, outspoken man, including as Secretary of Defense. I remember his anger later as Vice President when President Bush fired Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld had been Cheney's man, and Cheney was furious at Bush and expressed it. Most of all I remember two different occasions at Tyndall Air Force Base, airmen coming very respectfully up to me and asking, "Sir, aren't you Vice President Cheney?" That was in 2007, and after the second Time, I went to the VA clinic and enrolled in a supervised exercise and diet regimen and lost 47 pounds in twelve months. It's easy, weight drops off and energy increases if you do it right, and by spring 2008 I no longer looked like Dick Cheney. No, I'm absolutely dead serious.  The weight loss and continued heavy exercise and careful eating program turne...
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Yesterday's Sunday School Handout

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"Welcome, happy Monday!" week to week shall say. And below, as promised, is our Handout for yesterday's reading discussion of Secret Mark.  +++ A couple of isues that scholars notice about the Gospel according to Mark Mark 10. The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus 46  They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside.  ?! Mark 10:46 has this awkward wording about Jesus coming to Jericho and leaving Jericho, saying nothing about anything that happened there, thus creating a “gap” that leaves observant scholars puzzled. (Note below that both Matthew and Luke evidently saw the issue and solved it by wording that avoids creating the “gap”.) Matthew 20. Jesus Heals Two Blind Men 29  As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. 30  There were two blind men sitting by the roadside. When they heard that Jesus was passing by, they shouted, “Lord, have mercy o...
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Sunday: Secret Mark

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Sunday, and our church is celebrating it as All Saints Day, with those hymns and those lectionary propers. "I sing a song of the saints of God" is a regular hymn now, in our Hymnal 1940 it was grouped in the category "Children's Hymns." Always popular for this day - - "and one was a doctor, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast, and there's not any reason, no, not the least, why I shouldn't be one too." Linda's cooking our breakfast, which happens on Sunday morning, not other days. Other days we do our own thing twice a day, graze the refrigerator and/or pantry for breakfast and supper, with usually one prepared meal together, generally noon dinner which we sit down to at one o'clock or as late as two o'clock. About once a week, usually Fridays after visiting Malinda at Pruitt, we go out to eat, most often at a seafood restaurant but last week at Enzo's for pizza. Supper at home is a salad or a couple of...
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Brooks again

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Some days, for lack of whatever, I don't write a +Time blogpost. There was a Time when it bothered me to miss writing, but that has passed, it no longer bothers me in the least - - I write when I write and when I don't write I don't write. Today, Thursday was one of those days. Which? When I don't write. Exhausted from yesterday's activities, I fell into bed about seven PM, woke at 12 something midnight and was up for a couple hours to contemplate Secret Mark, then back to bed and slept until nine o'clock. Linda had something on the calendar, and we no longer go out and drive just one of us alone, so dress and go. But I read Arthur C Brooks' weekly life improvement essay, which brought again to mind, as so many things do, F. Schleiermacher, his essays, his criticism of the Nicene Creed, and his theological assertion that "there is implanted in each of us a sense of the infinite" as the reason that, as a species, we cannot resist being religious. Th...
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