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not a conundrum

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  It caught my eye. From a Roman Catholic retreat website, "Is God luring you out into the desert?" Much earlier than I'd hoped for a sleepy Saturday, this predawn morning I woke from another of a recent spate of anxiety dreams, into the blinding flash and explosive bang of a thunderstorm.  So, stumblingly up and turn on my coffee. Sacrifice to Father Nature, back, and it's brewed hot & black ready to sit down at my bayside window and, still rattled, sip from my magic mug, watching as the thunderstorm flashes and rages through.  Why the anxiety dreams?  I've not spoken to you lately, but I'm wondering: why these unsettling anxiety dreams? Once, forty years ago, an answer came, "I AM speaking to you, Tom Weller," I don't expect that ever again, but I'll try to relax and figure what comes. Some years ago - - it was Spring 2008, I participated in an eight-day retreat called Credo. The "national church" offered them for Episcopal cl

signs & salvation

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The three similar and related synoptic gospels Mark, Matthew, and Luke have the adult Jesus in Jerusalem only once, at the end (yes, because of his key motif attaching Jesus' to Jerusalem, Luke's infancy narrative does have Jesus there as a newborn and again when he's twelve years old). But Gospel John has Jesus in Jerusalem several Times (you can go through and count for yourself if you wish) for Jewish observances.  John chapter 5 (below, scroll down) is one such story, with Jesus offending Temple authorities by healing a lame man on the Sabbath, and with Jesus lecturing on his God-given authority. Our gospel reading for today, Thursday in the Fourth Week of Lent (John 5:30-47) is taken from that story. Instead of the usual NRSV(UE) version, I'm looking at Eugene Peterson's translation The Message. https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/Message-MSG-Bible/  It's not a study Bible, but it's great for telling the Greatest Story in a way that holds interest and

angels

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"Readers" in Hong Kong and Singapore are crowding my blogposts again with thousands of "reads" - - I really don't give a dee, have at it, whoever you are! The only Time it bothered me was years ago when I got a semi-threatening response from, I think it was Pakistan after I'd asserted that Pakistan was no friend or ally of the US, which Pakistan is not, as an "ally" they loved our financial aid but hated us. Anyway, some folks, about half of them to be truthful, are nut-fringe cases, which makes life itself a dance with danger. In that case, the somewhat alarming retort led me to code my blog to disallow responses.  My blog is not meant to be a forum anyway. Comments on FB are okay, though no arguments - - life is too short for nonsense, but boy-howdy is nonsense ever out there! ++++++++ Sean Dietrich's "Sean of the South" essay arrives in daily email. I admire him greatly, he's a parent-suicide survivor whose life would likely ha

happy birthday, Belovedy!

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March 12, 1972. Memories, there are memories, memories stir! Maybe I'll ramble a bit and reminisce.  March 1972: the previous summer, I had completed a sea duty tour, we had PCS'd from San Diego and were living on Naiche Road in Columbus, Ohio, where I was stationed as a Navy commander. Ohio was California by NO means! For One, a mild jolt of going from a land of beautiful, healthy trim Californians to a land of plump Yankee Germans, Oktoberfest, and total obsession with hunting season! Deer season, every section in our huge office complex had a desk with covered dishes of steaming hot venison specialties for everyone to wander through and sample. Yankees everywhere, but I no longer had to be uneasy about tarantulas in the garage. For Another, the weather! Except for the wild-fires that we watched zipping up and down the sides of the mountains just east of our Chula Vista neighborhood, wildfires that drifted burning ash onto the wooden shingles of our roof, San Diego weather wa

pound cake

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  Recently, Sean of the South commemorated Pound Cake Day, which took me back years and decades. It tapered off, but when I was a freshman at Florida, 1953-54, mama used to bake a poundcake and it would arrive as a large package in the mail, to my joy and that of our small group of Bay High 1953 classmates on our floor of North Hall, the freshmen "men's" dorm. As the saying goes, It's All Good, but my favorite was always the crust. Pound cake was a tradition in mama's family anyway, my grandmother Gentry was famous among us for her sour cream poundcake, and we kept her proud of it. Its only competition in those years was her Japanese FruitCake. I need to get over to Pensacola at least one more Time, to stand there and reminisce with her and Daddy Walt, for whom my brother is named.  Walter Henry Gentry. He was Walt, Walter Gentry, but Mamoo, which is what we called mama's mother, used to scream "HENRY!!" when she was frustrated with him. Remembering

living gumbo

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  In Apalachicola thirty-five or so years ago, Linda made a fine soup that we enjoyed for supper. It was a large pot and the soup was so good that I kept adding things so it wouldn't give out. This kept happening over the next ten days or two weeks, with the soup evolving and developing a life of its own, simmering on the stovetop days, and resting in the fridge nights. I called it My Living Soup, and sooner rather than later it got to the point that nobody would eat it but me. I have remembered that soup and the adventure of watching it mature. Last week we had supper with friends, sort of as a belated Mardi Gras party, with excellent gumbo. There was lots left over, and it came home with us. I loved it for breakfast the next morning.  A day or so later I added a quart of oysters and two pounds of shrimp, and we had Kristen over for supper the next evening, sending her home with a healthy portion and still plenty left for 7H. Two days later I got it out of the fridge, added half a

just a muse on today's Gospel reading

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Our gospel reading for today, Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent, starts out with a phony ring that gives me pause and thought to dismiss it altogether: Peter did NOT say to Jesus, "if a member of the church" because the church did not exist at the Time. So, what's the problem? First, check the Greek text by going to Bible Hub online. If you consider yourself a Bible student but don't know how to use elementary tools online, get with it!! Bible Gateway and Bible Hub are two of the most helpful and useful tools out there; I wish we'd had them when I was in seminary, but that was before the internet, when we either had to go to the library to search, or maintain a massive personal library ourselves at home or in our office.  I had the massive personal library, which has dwindled as my skills with the internet have improved over the years, such that I'm now down to less than a dozen books that I rely on as trusted sources for Bible study along with all the riches