to love earthly things

to love earthly things

My cups are out, readily accessible, and now I can use a different little treasure each morning. I won’t picture it, but today a teacup Tass & Jeremy brought me one of the times we went to Tallahassee as kittysitters while they were in England visiting his family. This is the only cup I’ve ever seen like this, clear glass with a thin, wiry metal frame. It shows beautifully the clarity of tea or coffee. The collect says, “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love heavenly things.” But I love this little cup and have anxiously guarded it all these years.

It has memories too. T&J brought it to me in August 2001. Up until then, our kittysitter stays were Linda, me, Kristen, and Paint (the grandchildren’s name for Linda’s mother). The morning I’m remembering, Kristen and I had an adventure to the Junior Museum’s restored old village, went home for lunch. Right after lunch as Paint was walking down the hall, she had a debilitating stroke, and we called 911 for the EMT ambulance. The three of us were up with her in the ER the rest of that day and all night long, until they admitted her to a hospital room. The attending ER physician was a man who married an Apalachicola girl from the Hodges family, I officiated their wedding in Trinity Church, and the family were especially dear friends. Anyway, the next morning, Malinda came over to tell Paint goodbye and to take Kristen home to Panama City. Later that day we transferred Paint to the residential hospice, where she died in the very wee hours before dawn the following morning. A day or so later, Tass phoned me that their plane had landed safely from London, and I had to tell her that Paint died, because Linda couldn’t.

It was the month before 9/11, while I was Interim Rector at Grace Church, Panama City Beach. A couple of weeks later, Linda and I rode the Sunset Limited to Arizona, where we buried Paint’s ashes in the gravesite with Linda’s father, whom we called Pete. We stayed several days in Phoenix and Tucson, making a nice trip and visit of it, to places we had loved when Pete and Paint lived in Scottsdale, during our Navy years in San Diego. We loved Phoenix, and Arizona, and the desert, especially in the springtime.

And I love this little teacup.

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


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