Nothing lasts forever, especially the life of an individual, as you will realize with gratitude as you move farther and farther into extreme old age, but for as long as it lasts (and with the now-and-then sciatica under at least relative control and possibly fading altogether for another Time and half a Time!), it's fun just being alive. For as long as I remember, my personal fun includes rising early, some might call it very early or even too early, simply to Be, to Be here, to enjoy Being, because life itself is good, appreciated, I'm most grateful to Be, and to have Been. Slightly to digress: not being a pain person, and accustomed to never having any pain whatsoever, and, hopefully, coming out of sciatica's latest visitation of pain, I'll confess that when the pain is at its worst ... No, nevermind, belay my last. Anyway, what's so great about Being up in the very early darkness? Sometimes it's looking out into what a line in our Book of Common Prayer calls

  Friday morning 5:29 a thunderstorm bowling through, lighting up the Bay with flash after flash of lightning, some of them jump out of your skin close with simultaneous flash and crash. Looks as if it'll pass quickly through and be done with us before I can contemplate what to post this morning, if anything. Picked up in my office at the church and brought home to read again, "Lamb" by Christopher Moore.  It was recommended to me by Anthony MacWhinnie the year we worked together at St Thomas by the Sea Episcopal Church in Laguna Beach, PCB, I think it was summer 2008 through spring 2009. An interesting year, when the bishop designated me as Anthony's mentor for his year of training as a newly ordained deacon. Bright and overflowing with stories, Anthony was a marine scientist in his life before going to seminary. And he was a hunter, a fisherman, a cook who brought fascinating dishes to parish suppers. Anthony never shot anything he didn't cook and eat. He was ki

  Ascension Day: "He indeed presented Himself alive after His suffering by many convincing-proofs, appearing to them during forty days" Ascension Day is one of the seven principle feast (celebration) days of the church year: Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Saints, Christmas, Epiphany. Based on Acts 1:3, Ascension Day is commemorated as the fortieth day from Easter Day, even though Luke 24 (Luke also wrote Acts) has Jesus ascending on the evening of Easter Day. It makes no difference; that the same author tells the event differently in two accounts is the writer's prerogative, artist's license.  Apparently coming prominently around the year 1000 CE, the whimsical art that Bible scholars call "the disappearing feet of Jesus" charms me, and I hope it charms you as well! T88&c  The Collect Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart and m

It needed a dash of Tabasco but by the Time that occurred to me it was all mixed and t'warn't no way in aitch to go back and start over, so it was slightly less than perfect, but still an A+ breakfast. Left over from a few days ago, yellow grits with cheese. Tarpon Dock Seafood has interesting grits, it was one of those. An abundant supplement of sharp cheddar added in this morning because my extreme old aging taste buds are not as perceptive as they were way back when I was eighty (let the reader understand). Crumble a cornbread (unsweet) muffin onto it. Mix and mash all together. Add a glob of mayonnaise, just a glob for slight lemony, nomesane? Mix, mix, mash, mash, mash with a large four-tine kitchen fork.  With olive oil, spray a small thin metal pan, scrape the cheese grits mix onto the pan and spread it out thin but not too thin. Into the toaster oven to bake at 330°F for twenty minutes or until it bubbles and spreads and browns crispy on top.  As the baked Super Cheese

  Taken in Benedict Hall, the parish house of Trinity, Apalachicola, one of my favorite snapshots is of Kristen, Malinda, and my mother sitting at a table for one of our parish dinners there. Kristen might be five years old, which would date the photo to 1998, the year I retired from parish ministry. Mama would have been 86. She lived two months past her 99th birthday. Born 112 years ago today, May 7, 1912, Louise Gentry, Mama was the second child and oldest girl of Mamie and Walter Gentry. She was born  at Bluff Springs, Century, Florida. Century is up US-29, which begins on Palafox Street in Pensacola and heads north. Vaguely, I remember being there a few Times as a boy. There's another photograph around here, framed, of my grandfather and his family gathered at the front porch of his parents' home for a wedding anniversary, and my mother is a little girl standing near her parents.  The house is a typical old Florida farmhouse, unpainted, with the front porch tin roof held up

Whether it's the U S Navy negotiating a destroyer contract with Ingalls, the UAW and GM negotiating a labor contract for staffing automobile factories, a school district negotiating teachers' salaries with the teachers' union, or the Allies negotiating an armistice with the Central Powers, negotiation requires power on both sides, and give and take; and there has to be some level of confidence, at least minimal trust between parties that each is negotiating from power, in good faith, and will abide by the agreement. I'm thinking of May 1945 in Berlin when first General Krebs then General Weidling met with Soviet General Chulkov in desperate attempts to have some German influence in the war's outcome: the German position was powerless, hopeless, insubstantial, and Chulkov's message was, "General, if you were in my position, would you negotiate with me?" The Germans were left with the options of total unconditional surrender or continue futile resistance