Miserable Offender

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid …

That’s the address to God, the theological assertion in the Collect for Purity, our opening cleansing rite for Holy Eucharist. It says we believe God knows everything that’s going on inside of us. I forget and sometimes muddle on as if it’s part of the innermost crevices of my mind where deepest longings abide and most guarded secrets are hid, that this is a blog, a web-log, not a diary or journal; that it’s as open for public ridicule, disgrace, scandal and shame as the sewer cover I can see from up here looking down to the street at the corner below. Cloaked in a holy man’s garb, profane, obscene and earthy behind the charade of black shirt and white collar, I’m not the pious creature that many expect and some seem to see. I have left undone those things which I ought to have done, and I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and I may be fooling everybody but the one who tolerates my snoring. Her and Almighty God unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.

There’s a bad guy here, a miserable offender. One of these days some cleric will pat his hand on a box containing what never was me in the first place and intone the words “Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy servant Thos. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming.” And I will be standing in the shadow knowing, “you got that right.”

Thos+ in +Time+ and counting



201510010700 Davis to Courtney. Not so pretty this morning, but it’s mine, all mine.