Friday, May 2, 2025

 

Magic mug of hot & black outside on 7H porch this morning. Looking east and southeast, from which a slightly too brisk, cool breeze.

I love to think of them at dawn Beneath the frail, pink sky Casting their nets in Galilee And fish-hawks circling by.

They cast their nets in Galilee Just off the hills of brown Such happy, simple fisherfolk Before the Lord came down.

Contented peaceful fishermen Before they ever knew The peace of God that filled their hearts Brimful and broke them too. 

Young John who trimmed the flapping sail Homeless, in Patmos died. Peter who hauled the teaming net Head down was crucified.

The peace of God it is no peace But strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing - The marvelous peace of God.

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A favorite at the Time, we sang William Alexander Percy's poem turned hymn now and then at the Lutheran seminary when I was a student there in the early 1980s, and to a perfect, lively tune. But unless I specified it as rector or vicar in parishes where I was in charge, we've never sung it in Episcopal worship, one reason in my mind being the off-putting music that it's set to in our hymnal. Bad music destroys great hymns. Percy's poem is one, 

Another is "Fling out the banner! let it float Skyward and seaward, high and wide; The sun that lights its shining folds, The Cross on which the Savior died". 

Yet another is the once magnificent Trinity hymn "Ancient of Days, who sittest throned in glory, To thee all knees are bent, all voices pray; Thy love has blessed the wide world's wondrous story With light and life since Eden's dawning day" consigned to oblivion by our hymnal revisers, not unlikely with one of their own tunes. 

But it's TGIF, isn't it, a lovely morning out. Breakfast plan is tossed salad with a handful of the small shrimp I bought the last Time we were in Sam's Club. Fridays, we drive out to Pruitt Health to see Malinda as soon as Kristen gets out of school; most Fridays she has a faculty meeting, which puts us later afternoon; then we go somewhere for late dinner/early supper, last Friday to Hunt's Oyster Bar here in.St Andrews. Today I've a haircut appointment at, I think, 1:15. Short on the sides and tapered all around, though tapered seems to mean different these days than my Navy days. On Facebook I've watched short videos of boys' mothers driving them long distances to a special barber, paying big bucks to have the barber cut off the long locks and transform them with a high fringe blowout taper. Usually a teen hoping to snare the girl of his dreams for the upcoming prom, but often an eleven year old nerd with flat hair parted on the left, longing to be noticed by the girl he has a crush on.

"No, you can't date," I remember Malinda telling Ray long years ago. "Mom! Of course I can date, I'm eleven years old," Ray told his mother. Ray was precocious with the ladies. These days he's late thirties, working as a chef the last he told me, living in Richmond, Virginia, a one-Time capital of the Confederacy, with wife Britany and daughter Lilly. Our one great-grandchild, Lilly turned ten years old last month.

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Bub, you wandered again. I was thinking to write about one of the lectionary's Bible readings for the upcoming Sunday, Easter 3C, but I'll let it go for now.

RSF&PTL anyway

T89&c

top pic from 7H porch, that set my mind on Percy's poem.

bottom pic peering through two slats of the shutters by my chair, a local ship heading for Progreso, Mexico.