Interlude
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I never explain anything.
My favorite and adopted line from the Mary Poppins film that Linda, Malinda, Joe and I saw at a theater in Tokyo in 1964 or 1965.
Wednesday breakfast. All my breakfasts are worth waiting for. Wednesday commitment to a bible visit, anon, anon, I'll get to it, maybe even scramble it in instead of separate. I'm saving John Prine's 1997 Coupe DeVille for a clear day of memories and longings. Well, it's clear out here on 7H porch,
bit hazy, 81° 92%. Wind E 9 mph, feels like 91°. The breeze on my walk was warm but pleasant and welcome. Clear weather here, while to the west of us they may be looking at a Category 4 hurricane before it's over. But I mean clear of distractions. Soon. Maybe tomorrow?
Jacob Blake and Black Lives Matter. Did you see his mother on television, and the picture of him with his children? It could be you, you know, if you weren't White. The only conscionable position in all this Black Lives Matter is to care the same about Jacob Blake's children as you care about your own children. If you don't, then, God help you not damn you, you don't get it, you just don't get it.
Lately, I'm contemplating me and my life. If you've read Revelation, read it as many times as I have, love and enjoy it, enjoy teaching it, love reading it again for still something else that I never noticed before, like it as much as I do, then you know that it's marked by events called Interludes. By a sudden Interlude. The narrator builds you up, builds up your anticipation and expectations by telling maybe six things, usually horrible. Then - - like Jesus pausing to chat with the bleeding woman whose faith healed her when she touched his garment, while we anxiously urgently want him to hurry to the home of the dying girl - - Revelation John pauses the terrifying action and doesn't give you the seventh scary event, but an Interlude. In Revelation, an Interlude may be long, it will be remarkable, it may seem to go on forever before we get back to what was happening before. Well, that's me, that's life, that describes my sense of what's been going on with me for the past two and a half years, since May 2018. I am in an Interlude.
Life was going along Normal. I was well and healthy, content. Teaching our adult Sunday school class at HNEC. Preaching maybe one Sunday in three or four and filling in for the rector as needed during CFB season (Roll Tide). Happy in 7H, we'd drive over to Tallahassee now and then. A few times a year, we'd drive down to Apalachicola, other beloved Home, and spend a couple of nights at Water Street Hotel, watch river and creek traffic, eat oysters on the half-shell even though they're no longer Local. We'd eat out several times a week, Alice's, Hunt's, Captain's Table, Uncle Ernie's, the Mexican place, Bayou Joe's. Golden Corral. Chow Time. A few restaurants at PCB that feature seafood or serve great sushi. Walk down to the Farmers' Market on Saturday mornings and buy huge tomatoes. Linda watching TV and I reading or preparing sermons or writing blogposts. After May 2015 life settled back down into fairly Normal. Then, wham, SHAZAM!! to quote Gomer Pyle, USMC infuriating the sergeant,
May 2018
October 2018
Hurrication
Change address with USPS
Scaffolding
Ongoing life in a construction zone
Pandemic
Shelter in Place
Black Lives Matter
ὁράω I see.
Interlude. Time Out. Pause. Watchful Waiting while everything changes. Stoppage Time. Contemplate, Reflect, Recall and even Remember selectively. Put to rest, Lay aside, Come to grips with. Read. Study. Watch. Realize. ὁράω I see that the kingdom of God has come with power. ὁράω in more than a visual sense. Experience. Live into.
I'm not the same as before, as in the old Normal that in any event will not be back for me. I don't know the same things. I don't believe the same things. Except for Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon, and the red Coupe DeVille that Lisa sent me a picture of, I'm not interested in the same things. I'm not the same person. Everything is behind me. But I still Am. I'm someone. As the housekeeper Mrs Macready says in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, "we all have our part to play". So there's a part for me. Old, older, oldest, seen by others as older than deep down inside of me I thought I was, I have a part and a place. Maybe it's writing this damn blogpost. Maybe it's keeping on keeping on but on the ground floor instead of level seven. Maybe it's watching films. Yesterday and last evening I watched "Angela's Ashes", based on starting the book and having long ago read "Teacher Man" and loving Frank McCourt. It's one of those autobiographies, book and film. I have one of those, but I'm not going to write it.
Sitting at the dining table, I realize that I can't understand what Linda is saying to me. I excuse myself, go to my office/study/den for hearing aids, can't remember what I came for, so go back to the table and sit down. Still can't hear Linda. Oh, yes! I get up again, return to my O/S/D, pick up my eyeglasses, put them on and return to the table. Gardenia it all to heliotrope, I still can't hear what Linda's saying. Go again to my O/S/D, into my bathroom (too much water on my ankles, so've been taking my FuroForty), and return to the table. Linda stares at me, gets up, goes to my O/S/D, and returns with my new magic hearing aids.
You see?
Everything is different. Old, older, oldest, I'm a new me. I've got to figure this out. No hurry, there's plenty of Time. It's intermission. Interlude.
BLM&PTL
T+
Oh, the Bible study: read the book of Revelation and find the Interludes.