what do you THINK?
Sunday morning seven-thirty-two, sitting here in my chair at my table by my window looking out across the Bay, slowly enjoying my magic mug of hot & black from my monthly coffee club. This cup of coffee is my first significant event of a day, and waking up while enjoying it unrushed, sans pressure to hurry, affects how I feel about the rest of my day.
Some urgent sense of Passing Time this morning, though, because it was our rotating day for eight o'clock Church, but getting up four Times in the night led to my sleeping until just after seven o'clock, making it a ten-thirty Sunday.
From arriving in Apalachicola summer 1984 until total retirement after being supply priest for Shell Island Sunday summer 2025, Sunday was my favorite day of the week for, what? forty-one years? Sunday is still my favorite breakfast because Sunday mornings Linda makes soft-scrambled cheese eggs; otherwise Sunday is different for me anymore: unless there's an early doctor appointment during the week, six days are total relaxation, but Sunday has turned into a pressure morning, hurry and get dressed, and I don't like feeling pressure to get moving. I'd rather sit here and think.
Think about what?
Well, what's out there - - directly due south of 7H porch, I checked it once on a map with a ruler, and seems to me it was through the Florida Straits and to a point in South or Central America. IDK, never absolutely certain of anything, I'm not sure I even know myself, so check and correct me if you wish, I'll go with your findings.
+++++++
As to "what's out there?" it's often my main thought bubble, with our Milky Way Galaxy in mind as one of some two trillion galaxies in the observable Universe, and doubtless several Times more galaxies on beyond in the area of the Universe that is called "unobservable" because light hasn't had Time to reach Earth since Yeh-Hi, the Big Bang.
And what manner of Force released it in the first place? How to reconcile the visible fact of incomprehensible vastness in this Universe alone, with earthly human religion, faith, belief - - certainty on many humans' part - - about God as a loving, caring personal Deity, or, alternatively, a judging, righteously punishing God of justice who is mindful of creatures' sins. I appreciate a Church where we can be satisfied with unanswered questions, with just the mystery.
For dinner party conversation:
+ how big is your God?
+ did you and/or your faith community visualize, imagine, and therefore create the Deity of your thinking, or is your God free to be what God will be, eh-yeh asher eh-yeh?
+ what of life itself, perhaps in the Universe unique on Earth at the moment?
+ considering the size of the Universe, is God concerned with your sins?
+ religion evolved to explain early humans' questions and fears about life and nature for which they had no answers; their answers were in the flat-earth world that was what they observed: does your ancient faith answer such existential questions satisfactorily, or do such answers need updating as knowledge develops?
+ what of the notion of a human soul, and the religious assertion that humans have a soul but other animals do not - - considering that, willy-nilly, humans, homo erectus ourselves, like all other life on Earth, evolved from the first one-cell sea life, through animals that we now call apes? If only humans have a soul, when did that unique feature appear?
+ humans have long been concerned about what happens to us when we die: is there afterlife? If not, is there total oblivion just as our non-existence in the ages before we were born? At our death, do we pass instantly from earthly life to heavenly life? That belief is not "scriptural" - - St Paul wrote (his letters, Bible, New Testament) that when we die we sleep in Jesus until the end of Time, when all dead and living rise into the air to meet Jesus for judgment either into oblivion or into a new kingdom of God on Earth with Jesus as the Son of Man returning to rule for God. Is this belief compatible with your view of the Universe? Mindful that no manner of faith or belief or certainty makes anything true, what do you think?
+ do you stick your head in the sand when issues and questions challenge your religious certainties?
+++++++
A Christmas gift this year was a bottle of Old Tom Gin, which is far different to London Dry Gin. Experimenting, I'm enjoying it thoroughly: today after Church, a glass of ice cubes, two jiggers of OTG poured over the ice, four shakes of aromatic bitters, fill the glass with ice water and add two maraschino cherries. Along with steamed jumbo shrimp dipped in chili/mayo sauce, an interesting and nice variation on the usual Sunday afternoon martini with cheese crackers.
The maraschino cherries bring to mind Trinity, Apalachicola holiday seasons (Christmas and Easter) communion bread that an all Time dearly loved parishioner used to bake and bring to church warm and fragrant, a huge round loaf with Greek letters and decorated with maraschino cherries. As celebrant, I'd break it at the Fraction as worshipers marveled at the wonder of it; and when communicants came up to the Altar rail and I broke off pieces as "the Body of Christ," invariably every child would ask, "Father Tom, may I have a cherry?" Working with that family was a highlight of life, is a cherished memory, and is a happiness of my forty-odd years as parish priest.
Happily would I do it all again!
For Life Itself,
RSF&PTL
T90