o'er the tumult
Opening email, my computer went down a side road and highlighted an 11/28/10 email from Gina Weller Webb, an exchange about The Scallop Fiasco, a family memory from the early 1950s. Gina’s dead, I can’t ask her family questions anymore, or have conversation about our childhood and teen years, and I’m so glad to be a sentimentalist who saves old things, old emails. Old bits of conversation become treasures, both emails popping up and memories surfacing at random.
A conversation while visiting that summer when Gina was in hospital with a heart issue, Linda and I had been staying in the rectory at Trinity, Apalachicola a couple of weeks while the rector was overseas on holiday and I was filling in as Supply Priest for her; and I came back to PC because Gina was in hospital. A long, mutually informative conversation that visit.
Earlier, spring/summer 2011, a long, revealing conversation that I've recalled here before. The two of us meeting and stopping to stand at the front door of Community Healthcare as Gina was arriving to visit Mama, and I was just leaving; well over an hour, a major discovery event for me, about our growing up years in the family together, her telling me that she, middle-child sister, and I, oldest-child brother, had experienced life so differently that she described it as “two separate families” and “two completely different mothers.” Even in the painful sadness of it, the conversation turned on lights and opened windows and was so helpful to me. One of those irreplaceable treasures.
Rained overnight, obviously wind with it, because 7H porch is wet all the way up to the sliding glass doors. Cloudy at the moment, 57°F, 97% humidity, wind NNW 11 mph, and the weather front line that went through St Andrews this morning is just now passing Apalachicola, place of my heart.
Snack with second mug of hot & black: three saltine cracker squares, each piled high with artichoke spinach cheese dip appetizer brought home from Wednesday evening with friends. With saltines, I never put stuff on “top” of the cracker, I always put it on the bottom so the first thing to hit my tongue is the saltines’ salty. In a few minutes, with my last few sips of still hot coffee, a saltine with a little square of cheddar cheese, piled with apricot spread, a snack dessert.
But my Friday shoulds and oughts, I should be doing some sort of comment on the lectionary readings for Sunday:
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
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The lectionary’s theme for Sunday, which shows in the Collect, the OT lesson above, and the Gospel story of Jesus calling Peter & Andrew, James & John, is answering the Call, responding to God’s call on our lives. If I were still in a liturgy planning role we would for sure sing “Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult” to its tune Galilee, but I’m not. Anyway, everyone knows the story of God calling Jonah to go preach hell and damnation to Nineveh. Jonah resists and flees, Jonah gets swallowed by a giant fish (I mean it’s a story, for chrissakes, Heilsgeschichte, but there have actually been people out looking for a fish big enough to swallow a man and for the man to contemplate life while in the fish’s belly for three days before being vomited out, like Pinocchio who built a fire inside Monstro the Whale, who sneezed him out). Jonah repents of his obstinacy, sings a song about the Lord, and goes to Nineveh. Jonah converts the folks there such that God relents of his vow to incinerate Nineveh, and Jonah is furious with God. It’s a call story in which successful prophetic preaching brings repentance and salvation by the grace of God. Jonah would rather be mad.
Especially in the Middle East where Jonah was, there are lots of folks who'd rather be mad than work toward peace, folks for whom War IS their Peace, and for whom quiet Peace will not come until the enemy is totally obliterated.
Need a picture to post with this. I'll go searching.
RSF&PTL
T88&c