who gives life
Shehecheyanu when I am sitting on 7H porch and a flight of several dozen pelicans glides by close, so close as to fill the porch's picture-frame of my view; close, level, and, before I can grab my camera, tilts up to the right and sails off toward their dayTime fishing perch - - shehecheyanu. Baruch ata, Adonai Eloheinu Melech haOlam, blessed art thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, shehecheyanu, who gives life.
Top pic: I did manage to snap a little flight of a few, and one of an osprey arriving to fish for breakfast.
That's today, Monday after Sunday:
שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ
Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Haolam, shehecheyanu
Blessed are You Lord our God King of the Universe, who gives life
Sunday: just after five o'clock this morning I was outside on 7H porch sipping hot & black, when I realized I'd left my phone inside. I'd picked it up first, carried it to where the coffee was filling the room with its aroma and finishing its gurgling sound, but taking the coffee, I'd left the phone inside. Deciding that this was a sign and moment to be free of electronics, I settled into the start of the day, only to have the east-rising sun do brilliant works of pink, white and gray with the high clouds. If you are taking pictures of sun effects on clouds, there's no point in running inside to grab your camera, because each photo op is instant and gone. So, I sat there admiring and remembering the Shehecheyanu, sorry that this Sunday morning's bit of unique magnificence was not being recorded.
It reminded me of a scene in C S Lewis' "The Great Divorce" when one of the visitors who'd come up from Hell on the overnight bus wanted to stay in Heaven so s/he could paint Heaven's magnificence but was told that Heaven's beauty is permanent, ever-changing, and could not be arrested in a moment.
So, you missed Sunday morning's sunrise spectacle, but I didn't.
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June 29th 1957, Linda and I have been married
sixty-eight years today (walking next to Linda, the boy with the ears is Bubba, Carroll, Tom, Commander Weller, Fr Tom). If 1957 + 68 = 2025, then 21 + 68 = 89, and my age is making itself felt, someTimes so much so that I wish Linda had married a much younger man so I wouldn't be so old this morning, nomesane?
This morning we're going to ten-thirty service at HNEC, the same church where that wedding took place. Linda sponsored altar flowers for today and intends to bring one vase home to take to Malinda at Pruitt Health our next visit. After church we are going out for dinner, probably at Captain's Table across the street.
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Yesterday morning I stopped blogging there after Linda reminded me, "Keep your eye on the Time," and it was Get Ready to Leave for Church.
So, the day happened. Church to collect gifts, Captain's Table for oysters - - I ordered two-dozen raw half-shell and they were the first oysters on the half-shell I've ever had where all 24, every shell cup I tipped onto my tongue gave me a mouthful of sand and grit, IDK, WTH?
Next Time maybe I'll order One for a sampler before going overboard, eh? IDK about CTable, but if you buy a box of oysters at Tarpon Dock, they'll open one for you to sample before you commit.
A bit of Linda's grouper, home and a long nap. Then for supper the piece de resistance that outGlowed all the rest of the day combined: a juicy, succulent, runny, drippy Tomato sandwich on white bread, with Hellmann's. Truth, to double the happiness I made it two open-face tomato sandwiches.
With it, a glass of red, Oregon pinot noir, perfect and smooth, someone said "red velvet."
More Truth, I'm working that bottle of Oregon red down, having started it with the thin spaghetti with red sauce and ground beef that Linda made for us a day or so ago. There's spaghetti sauce left, and my breakfast plan includes a large spoonful of it, along with shaved extra sharp cheese, in an omelet I'll make.
It's a new week, isn't it! Here's one of our lectionary propers for next Sunday:
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, `Peace to this house!' And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, `The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, `Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we shake off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.'
"Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."
The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
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What comes to mind? Well, the Job story about Satan. The Moses story about the bronze serpent Moses fashioned to cure snakebites - - I always wonder where Moses got the bronze out there in the Wilderness, and how he got it hot and soft enough to forge into a serpent: told over generations and finally written down ages after Moses, the story has asynchronicities that don't matter to an ancient storyteller if s/he even notices them. Comes also to mind, C S Lewis, "The Magician's Nephew" of "The Chronicles of Narnia," when Digory and Polly were zapped straight off the streets of London into the wrong pool, and emerged with Jadis the Witch still clinging to the Lamppost just as Aslan was singing Narnia into existence: an alternate Creation Story in which evil comes, introduced by us humans, a witch who, slain later in another chronicle, in death reverts to serpent.
RSF&PTL, shehecheyanu, who gives life ->
three children, five grandchildren, one great-grandchild
T89&c