Thos+ in +Time+

After arising about 0215 and for an exhausting if happy morning, yesterday’s Sunday Nap turned out a disappointment, about an hour instead of the three hours I’d anticipated, and all the way through it I was pretty sure I was awake and never went to sleep at all. Then awake to edit and post yesterday morning's what passed for a homily. Not a sermon, a homily is a short commentary on scripture that has just been read and heard, the widow's mite. 

Anyway, if I’m crabby this morning, that’s just the way it is. Oops, can’t be crabby today: Monday, customarily my Pastoral Day Off all my years as a parish priest; and not only is it raining out, there’s the lightning and thunder I’ve been missing. So it’s happy, I love a rainy day, and it’s quite cool out. Last evening I sat outside on the porch until late, neglected to bring chair cushions in and now they’re soaked. Judging by the water sitting on the table and the point at which my socks got wet, wind must have blown too, quite breezy up here. 

Socks? These are my sleeping socks. Loose cotton the rest of the year, snug wool in winter. 

String of consciousness, musing too personal, maybe this is a diary after all. I should be more careful what I say and disclose. Or maybe it’s too late for that, my heart is open, my desires known, and my secrets are not hid. And my meltdown is already under observation and scrutiny.

The kindest folks, relatives, friends and neighbors ask me to join and communicate on the various social media, Twitter, Linked In, and seems to me there’re a couple others. They never hear back from me, I don’t do it because I don’t know how to use them, they all require passwords that are too much bother, that I can’t remember, I don't even do Facebook except for the quick daily link to this insane blogpost. Besides I like being up here in my own high heaven with my head in the sand. Except for ridiculous stuff like political debates, and if there's a hurricane in the Gulf, I don’t even watch TV or read the newspaper, only know what comes across my computer screen as NYT, CNN or Fox online, which may be why I have my facts all mixed up.

This is Monday. That it is no longer my pastoral day off has my dailyweek confused such that there’s no longer order to my world. Monday walk, meet, draft the worship bulletin for next Sunday, home for lunch, nap. Rest of the week is same as the past thirty-odd years, so there’s no sense of a break. At eighty I still miss two things in my life. Waking Tass up for school with a nuzzling kiss on the cheek and saying Daddy loves you. Getting in my car Sunday afternoon and driving to Panama City to get Kristen. That weekly drive was my time for remembering. What? 

Rain is pouring off the roof drains. Brilliant flashes of lightning seem quite close to my window, but the thunder waits and only rumbles from far off.

Most everybody's asleep in Grover's Corners. There are a few lights on: Shorty Hawkins,  down at the depot, has just watched the Albany train go by. And at the livery stable somebody’s setting up late and talking. Yes, it's clearing up. There are the stars doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings up there. Just chalk ... or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself.  The strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.

He winds his watch.

Hm. . . . Eleven o'clock in Grover's Corners.  You get a good rest, too.  Good night.