window of the mind
Having a second mug of hot & black this morning while the steak comes to room temperature before I cook it along with fried eggs. I cut a thin breakfast steak off of the standing rib roast that didn't get cooked at Christmas because we had more than enough food as it was.
On high heat, this steak will get seared eight to ten seconds until crispy black and the room fills with smoke, then flipped over and the other side seared for almost ten seconds until black, then onto the warmed plate to wait in the toaster oven while I fry three eggs over medium to lay on top of the steak.
Various things on my mind this morning. One is that now in full retirement I'm no longer blogging daily as I did for fifteen years, age 75 to 90. Couple of factors occur to me, one is that I'm no longer deeply involved and invested in intellectually converting a Bible text to a sermon that makes sense to me these days when "Seek the Truth, Come whence it May, Cost what it Will" begins with my mind's eye view of "You Are Here" on one of trillions of planets, in an outer ring of a galaxy that's one of trillions of galaxies, in an Incomprehensible Universe where Pantokrator of all this could not possibly be interested in punishing me for saying bad words if I get my steak too well done or cook my eggs too runny, so that "Cost what it Will" becomes exorbitant in terms of all that I was raised to know as Truth. My truth begins with the realization that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is infinitely more than Church Fathers ever imagined and imaged.
Another factor is that the national situation is such an extreme downer that I try to avoid thinking about it, stay out of hearing of the television, stay off of news sites online, and yet saying nothing makes me complicit.
The least of it is the evil bullying vengeance being perpetrated upon Captain USN Retired, Astronaut, Senator Mark Kelly, who spoke out indiscreetly*; at the other end is the bullying of Greenland, ICE non-accountable for outright deliberate road rage style murder of a young mother; for all of it shame, shame, shame, including shame on Congress for allowing themselves to be cowed, indeed shame on anyone who can hold their head up while all this is going on. So my point being that life at this Time is missing its enthusiasm, pride, joy, I seldom have the heart to contemplate, write, post a blog..
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Enough, let it go. Give me the grace to let go of what I cannot change.
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The New Yorker cover of folks out in the cold on the sidewalk passing the window of a living room where a warm and content kitty naps comfortably reminds me of an event in our lives years ago, it would have been 1984. Before coming to Apalachicola, home to Florida, we were "candidating" for a rector call to several parishes in central Pennsylvania. I honestly forget where this particular parish was, it was essentially a high church "blue collar" parish in a hardworking little town. The position included a home. Adjacent to and connected by a door into the church sanctuary, the rectory (house for priest and family) was on the street, jam against the sidewalk, the front door of the rectory opened from the sidewalk into the living room, and a living room window was right on the sidewalk just as is The New Yorker living room with the kitty in the window.
Despite the window being "locked," it was common most mornings for the priest or a member of his family to find, upon coming downstairs into the living room mornings, that one homeless person or another had managed to jiggle the window open, boost himself up, crawl into the living room and sleep one off on the living room sofa.
That parish and I were not a good match, they called another priest and we'd decided to turn it down if offered. "High Church," as I said, and I always enjoyed a high mass with all its sounds and smells and motions; but the parishioners took very seriously and theologically to heart all the features of their High Mass and they needed and deserved a priest whose liturgical theology was a good fit; mine was not and is not, to them it was dead serious, to me it's fun.
But that Tass, Linda and I would have been sleeping upstairs in a rectory where it was acceptable for drunk hoboes to come into the rectory living room several nights a week also played into it. I hadn't thought of that in years until The New Yorker came in yesterday's mail.
Speaking of - - I've cancelled auto renewal for my subscriptions to The Atlantic and The New Yorker because in my ancient age, eyelashes of the lower lid of my right eye turn in and constantly brush against the eyeball, making eye movement to read totally discouraging anymore. More bad words - - see no evil, think no evil, do no evil, speak no evil - - and not only am I a retired Navy person with a sailor mouth, I grew up working in a fish house with and around fishermen, the most profane species on Earth, and I speak their language, especially when riled or crabby: I have done those things which i ought not to have done, and I have left undone those things which I ought to have done, and there is no health in me, miserable offender.
Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.
T90
* Mark Kelly's indiscretion was to speak incompletely. It's not enough to tell military people that they are not required to obey illegal orders; it's equally important to tell them/us that each individual soldier, sailor, airman is not the final authority on what's "illegal," individuals must be most careful in acting on such a thing, because you cannot imagine the hole that you will have dug for yourself if it turns out that legal authority later determines that you were wrong. Senator Mark Kelly et al should have included this caution.