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Mary Sunday

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Calvin and Hobbes is a permanent favorite comic strip, especially including Calvin's occasional forays into theology, always on the mark if a step over the line for many folks. But the humor in religion, often hiding subtly waiting to be seen, can be what makes religion credible and tolerable at all, that's each person's call. Anyway, here's our gospel reading for church this morning: Matthew 1:18-25 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name h...
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Saturday before Christmas Day

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Earth is just one of 3.2 trillion planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Our sun is just one of 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. The Milky Way is just one of 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. What may lie outside the observable universe in the entirety of the Pantokrator's creation boggles the mind incomprehensibly.  ++++++++++ It's just you and me, Lord. A man IS an island after all, isolated, an island, it's just us, it's just you and me. And then nothing - - unaware dust - - not even the darkness of oblivion. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return - - to disperse in a whiff of breeze, Ruach, the breath of God. ++++++++ Now and then, from Time to Time, an essay, meditation, or other sort of article appears that is so exquisite to me as to warrant copy and paste into my weblog. From the NYT, today's Opinion essay by MDC Drout is such, beginning with my identification with what he says about JRR Tolkien and his Middle-Earth, a real...
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as pitiless

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  Bondi Beach, I've been to Bondi Beach during a couple of visits to Sydney. Brown University, in 1957 when I was a Navy officer candidate at Newport, Rhode Island, Linda and I drove up to Providence to have dinner with a son of one of my grandfather's brothers, Reginald Heber Weller, who was bishop of Fon-du-Lac, Wisconsin early in the 20th century.  Bondi & Brown - the problem with Earth is male humans, our evil nature: creation's male/female plan for reproduction was ill conceived. And, as with guns out of control in America, it's too late to do anything about it.  When I was a boy everyone had firearms and it was no problem, what's the problem now? Something destructive in civilization is rapidly deteriorating its males, personal rights eclipse the wellbeing of society and our children. Analyzing the problem is a task for psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists; doing anything about it is impossible in America because of both the nature of politics and th...
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Sat Dec 13

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Yesterday was our Tyndall day: we drove out to Tyndall AFB to pick up Linda's new eyeglasses at the optical shop. Hers are more costly, maybe it's the frames, IDK, but with my insurance coverage and the plain frames I like, my eyeglasses with the complicated prescription are $10 at TAFB or several hundred $ at the eye center, and the prescription hasn't changed the last five or more years, so I just go out to Tyndall and get a new pair every January. My good news this week was that the eye surgeon said the issue with the lower eyelid in my right eye does not warrant surgery after all, which left me euphoric enough that Linda had to stop me from going by Cramer's and picking out a new machine.  They no longer sell Buicks, so my current favorite is that new GMC Terrapin, which they corrected to the same body style as the Chevy Equinox with better vision all around.  The other news was that the brush biopsy I expected of the oral surgeon was an excision instead, day before...
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Thursday Dark

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  HIGH RIP CURRENT RISK NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM CST THURSDAY. Rip currents can sweep even the best swimmers away from shore into deeper water.  Isn't interdiction on the high seas an Act of War? "Not necessarily," rules AI. The last I recall is 1962, ships of the Soviet Union carrying missile base materials to Cuba and us intercepting them - - it was a tense Time and a relief when the Soviets did not respond as if it were an act of war, but turned the ships back.  Thu Dec 11 3:50 AM here in 7H, 51°F feels like 42° Wind NNW 10 mph, gusts to 22 mph Moon 56% last quarter.  Relief and a great happiness for me this past Monday morning when the doctor ruled No Surgery on the lower eyelid of my right eye. A factor of age, the eyelid is turning inward a bit such that eyelashes interfere with eye movement, causing me to blink, rub the eye, blink. A prescription med is easing it. I don't like the idea of anything happening close to my eyes, much less it actually having to hap...
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remember

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  Let's remember Pearl Harbor As we go to meet the foe. Let's remember Pearl Harbor As we did the Alamo. We will always remember how they died for Liberty. Let's remember Pearl Harbor And go on to victory. ++++++++++ 1940s years at Cove School we began each day of class with a Devotional that included pledge of allegiance to the flag, maybe a Bible reading (I don't recall for sure), a prayer, and one or more songs. One song we loved to sing was "God bless America," another was "My country, ' tis of thee." We had other songs, "There's a church in the valley by the wild wood" was one, Robert will remember.   One of our favorite songs in those years of World War Two was "Let's remember Pearl Harbor," to the lyrics above. It comes to mind today, December 7, Pearl Harbor Day.  Church this morning, weather permitting (or likely even if not), but this afternoon I may watch one or the other of many films available online about...
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Sat Dec 6

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\ \ We had in mind, with Kristen driving, a trip to Apalachicola this morning, visit the John Gorrie Museum, shop, have lunch, and be home by mid-afternoon when darkness begins to set in. But yesterday's promise of rain shelved that plan. The car is cramped in the back seat, so maybe it's sort of a relief that I'm not looking to make that ride today.  There was a Time when American cars were built to accommodate rear seat passengers comfortably, with plenty of legroom: that started ending for esthetic reasons, and practical reasons of overall length, when car design changed from square with the passenger compartment extending the full length of the car, to incorporating the "boot" to be more than simply a trunk-rack, with the "boot" or trunk extended forward into rear seat legroom, pushing the rear seat up close to the front seat.  Meanwhile, the threatened rainstorms are apparently not developing after all. We'll have a Saturday at home, maybe enjoy...
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