Keeping the X
Tuesday predawn, 66°F 100%, a winter morning on the Florida Gulf Coast, well, winter isn’t for a couple days, is it, but at least Hurricane Season knows itself is over. The fog is so thick (how thick is it?), it’s so thick that no navigation lights are seen, not even the flashing red light just off 7H starboard bow. And what about my flashing green across where Χάρων waits to start this way? Not seen, gone in the mist. From the fog, the slightest sound of wave action seven stories down.
Usually welcoming, more often welcoming than forbidding, the Bay is ignoring me. As though StAndrews Bay has withdrawn: will it rush back on a tsunami tide that sweeps away and leaves clean? Or, rubble. A new parishioner couple once proudly told me they had bought a house in Eastpoint, impressed imagining how beautiful it would be once it was cleaned up from the recent hurricane. I told them that, the hurricane just having swept through, Eastpoint was now the cleanest it had ever been. They later gave directions to their house in terms of "turn right at the old refrigerator, left after the second mattress, one block and you're there."
Usually welcoming, more often welcoming than forbidding, the Bay is ignoring me. As though StAndrews Bay has withdrawn: will it rush back on a tsunami tide that sweeps away and leaves clean? Or, rubble. A new parishioner couple once proudly told me they had bought a house in Eastpoint, impressed imagining how beautiful it would be once it was cleaned up from the recent hurricane. I told them that, the hurricane just having swept through, Eastpoint was now the cleanest it had ever been. They later gave directions to their house in terms of "turn right at the old refrigerator, left after the second mattress, one block and you're there."
And how is it, to be 82? Hidden away in my personal retreat that I dearly love, it’s as if I’m disappearing, slowly disappearing. Don’t search. Don’t come looking for me. And Xmas, Christmas is where the heart is, or where you left it: driving from Northern Virginia to Central Pennsylvania (we had twenty-five inches of snow that winter). Christmas is its Eve Mass: a chill, foggy evening on Florida’s Forgotten Coast. Beloved ordination chasuble. Sans swinging thurible, ring on left index finger, mid-chain in right hand, vessel lightly swinging, incense drifting, Wayne, didn't you swing that for me, and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well but it took me nearly twenty years to discern, see, realize and know that Christmas also happens elsewhere than Trinity Church.
Because Christmas comes before Birthday, this Time next week, my 83rd, count them, Keep the Χριστός in XMas will have come and gone. As Robert says, God Willing, but it will have come and gone regardless, won't it.
Because Christmas comes before Birthday, this Time next week, my 83rd, count them, Keep the Χριστός in XMas will have come and gone. As Robert says, God Willing, but it will have come and gone regardless, won't it.
I left my heart …
DThos+
Tuesday 20171219 new tires for Kristen’s Volvo XC60, which we’ve now had going on five years. TAFB for haircut. What else?