the universe, the mind of God

 

Posting this Sunday evening for tomorrow morning.

Good morning, Monday morning in Holy Week 2024, I intended to get a head start on my retirement-era Wilderness Retreat this morning, with my exercise plan for that Time and half-a-Time; but we are going to the eye center at Tyndall AFB, and any trip to Tyndall quickly becomes our "One Thing" for the day; and I get my exercise while we're there, returning home exhausted.

Next Sunday, the last Sunday in March 2024, is Easter Day. Any Time a Christian is asked, "What's the greatest celebration of the church year?" the politically correct answer is Easter, because in the Resurrection, God loved us enough to get up and, forgiving us, come straight back to us no matter how viciously cruel we'd treated Him. But my answer is still and always Christmas, not only because it's more fun than Easter, but because theologically, God loved us enough to come in the first place. 

Gazing out into the Universe and contemplating the Pantokrator, my theology is always way different from everyone else's anyway. 

Every dot is a galaxy. To me, everyone else's God is too small, including Christian theology that came to us from an entirely different worldview. 

The doctrine of Atonement, Jesus dying on Cross to pay, the purchase of blood, for the forgiveness of our sins is a later (though instantly later, St Paul certainly, and Matthew picks it up) understanding of the Incarnation. The bloody violence of Atonement theology boggles my concept of, and what I want to believe about, the merciful lovingkindness of God the Father, himself caring for me, a speck on a speck, incredible in the Universe of Pantokrator, which I believe is actually an infinite, incomprehensibly limitless Multiverse - - in Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town," Emily says "the Universe, the mind of God" and George breathes, "WOW!" 

You speak for yourself, I'll speak for me. As I've often said here, one of my hero events is Steve Jobs' college commencement address where he counsels, Don't get trapped by dogma, which is the result of other people's thinking. I stand and repeat, for example, the Nicene Creed, and I don't cross my fingers and toes, but I say it because it's part of our story even though I'm thoroughly aware of its dark history.

When I was in charge of a parish, instead of standing and reciting the Nicene Creed per tradition and the rubrics, I had us stand and sing a hymn, "Wir Glauben," which means "we believe." It's a lovely musical setting of the Apostles' Creed, which I can say with greater integrity. 

Preach: I preached the sermon at church yesterday, the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday. My next pulpit assignment is April 7, the Second Sunday of Easter, called "Doubting Thomas Sunday" because we read John's post-resurrection story of Jesus appearing to his friends, out of nowhere, in a room where the doors are locked and barred (John 20:19-31). Like most or all of Gospel John, the story stretches the imagination, and the apostle Thomas isn't having it. I'm preaching that day while most of the congregation is away at our diocesan Camp Beckwith for the annual spring retreat with the rector. 

Then the next two Sundays in April I'm leading the 2024 confirmation classes in prep for the bishop's visit in May. Then my last Sunday in the pulpit is April 28, the Fifth Sunday of Easter. My last Sunday at Holy Nativity will be the day the rector retires May 19, and my "Forty Days" runs May 20 to June 30; unless I decide, Lenten style, not to count Sundays, in which case it will run through the Fourth of July. Which will it be? It will be whatever I decide and say it will be. In OT jargon, "forty" really just means "a long Time," and I may just keep going.

Speaking of preaching, an observation: watching our worship services on Facebook later, I've noticed that the man in the pulpit looks a helluva lot older than the fellow I shave in the mirror mornings. Does it bother me? Well, yeah! Mirror, mirror on the wall &c, and the mirror knows the right answer, the church cam always gets it wrong. Either way and whatever, clearly, It's Time.

+++++++++

Yesterday's dinner, Sunday dinner, a pink martini, pink from a gift jar of pickled onion, garlic, pepper, beet, far superior to my usual dirty martini. Then roast leg of lamb, rice & gravy, pan stirred fresh spinach, all favorites. 

BTW my best martini is half high-botanicals gin and half potato vodka from Poland. Pour of dry vermouth. All in a shaker, shake the devil out of it, dump into martini glass and enjoy. Usually there are icy bits in the first sips. Sipping a martini always puts me in J D Salinger's story with Franny and Zooey drinking martinis as the hippest of sophisticated Ivy League college kids and, in a hip place in New York, him asking her if she wants another martini: for the life of me, I cannot visualize myself at UF drinking martinis. Come to think of it, wasn't an issue anyway, because Alachua was a dry county in those years, may still be. For a big party at the KA house, several of the brothers always had to go over the county line to buy booze, which was always just gallons of grain alcohol for mixing. 

My realization with the KAs was the spring when the chapter had to make a choice whether to spend $1000 to get the men's bathroom plumbing fixed so it didn't drip into the ladies' powder room just below it, or spend the $1000 on booze for an upcoming party, and the booze won unanimously. I quietly just didn't return to the KA house when I went back to school after summer vacation that year. It's just me, they were good guys, it's me. My mother used to say I was born 35 years old, IDK. If I could go back in life, I'd go back to age 17 and start there, just graduating from Bay High; but if that were to happen I'd inevitably make one different choice of roads diverging in the yellow wood and ruin everything; so if I were offered the chance to go back, I'd decline. I like life as it has delivered me up against going into ninety years, nomesane?

Wander wander wander. 

Exercise and essen, I'm trying to eat breakfast sans carbs (because of the otherwise inevitable carb coma); 

MONDAY MORNING ADDENDUM, BREAKFAST OF THE LAST TWO DUCK EGGS SCRAMBLED WITH CABOT EXTRA SHARP CHEDDAR AND TOPPED WITH MUSHROOM GRAVY LEFT OVER FROM SUNDAY DINNER:

one other meal a day, generally soon after noon and never later than two o'clock; then at night a glass or two of ice water or maybe some kind of juice I like, tomato, cranberry. I need to drop lots of pounds, but I intend to drop eight pounds by the Time of my annual physical in September. The furosemide is a big help, draining as it does, fluid from my feet, ankles, legs. This stage of CHF keeps me always tired, but I'm planning to fight back with slightly more walking and slightly less eating - - without fooling myself.

See, finding oneself in extreme old age necessitates being extra mindful of health issues. Most of the people I've known in life are dead, even long dead, including colleagues who were my age, friends and loved ones. You'll find that at this age anything can happen and usually does, and it's more or less day to day. Still and all, Life is Good, and Every Day Is A Beautiful Day.

RSF&PTL

T88&c  

pics: Linda's amaryllis blooming red and magnificent

NASA pic deep into the universe: who, what, where is God?