Hot & black with a treat, two saltines, each with a spoonful of purple muscadine jelly jam. More often no cracker, just a spoon of jam straight from the jar. Same with the whole fig preserves from Tanya's Garden on 77 heading toward Lynn Haven. Strange dream, stranger still to remember it. St Paul was inside the house, and someone told me that he had played golf with Jesus' older brother and knew his sister. Disbelieving I called out, "Paul? Paul?" and he answered from inside the house, I never actually saw him, "Yes?" "Did you play golf with Jesus' brother?" "Yes, I did." "How old was he?" I don't remember the answer. "How old was hs sister at the Time?" "A couple of years younger." "How old was Jesus at the Time?" I think he said Jesus was a baby at the Time, but my mind started boggling that this was crossing a doctrine dogma line, and the dream shifted to something else.  Temperatu...

  A highlight is receiving the package of my club coffee, as I call it, in the mail every month. It arrived last week, but I waited until last evening to open it, to count easily how long it lasts, starting with the first mug on April Fool's Day. Every morning I have one eight-ounce serving, kept hot in my magic mug while I sip it, slowly, sometimes over the first hour of my morning. There's other coffee here, which Linda drinks, and which I also drink if I want a second mug. The club coffee gets rationed out, though, one per day, with two of those little coffee scoopers-full for the eight ounce cup.  Sometimes I have a little snack to go with it, this morning a thick slice of Braunschweiger, German liverwurst from Aldi's, held between two square saltine crackers, the saltines buttered lightly so as to hold to the liverwurst.  The saltine crackers we brought home from Captain's Table across the street, where we went for oysters after church last Sunday. Large oysters fr...

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. +++++++++ Think and speak for yourself; myself, in our developing political climate, I find this collect terrifying. But again, myself, as we sink into the darkness, I'm thankful to be the age I am, and to have lived in America's Time in the sun. At least, sun for me as a White American Male. For many Americans, it was just starting to get light.  The experience and lesson of human history is that every empire has its Time and then falls; either collapses fairly peaceably as the British Empire and the Soviet Union, or is brought down forcibly as the Roman Empire, the Japanese Em...

  Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations   Rooted in the Christian contemplative tradition, the Daily Meditations offer reflections from Richard Rohr, CAC faculty, and guest teachers to help you deepen your spiritual practice and embody compassion in the world.     READ ON CAC.ORG     Week Fourteen: Contemplative Nonconformity Protecting Our Own Light   Brian McLaren considers how authoritarian systems seek conformity. He highlights practices of contemplation and community that can strengthen our resolve and enable us to remain “salt and light” under difficult circumstances.   An expert in authoritarian regimes, Sarah Kendzior captures the danger like this:   Authoritarianism is not merely a matter of state control, it is something that eats away at who you are. It makes you afraid, and fear can make you cruel. It compels you to conform and to comply and accept things that you would never accept, to do things you never thought you would do. ...