Good FSU (31) - Boston College (24) game today, there appeared to be a lot of empty seats in the Massachusetts stadium, but FSU did well, we were proud. Same with the Clemson - Syracuse game, which we watched going on in the living room during noon dinner.  Noon dinner was okra & fresh tomatoes with onion, lobster meat, and the second package of very good lamb steaks. The lamb steaks are a tasty, reasonably priced alternative to beef steaks, and seeming even more special because we have lamb so seldom. I cooked the steaks medium, slightly pink. Oh, an ice cold Abita beer, which was on twofers at Publix. Then a wee slice of sweet potato pie. My weigh-in tomorrow morning will not see the slight daily drop that I've been nursing along in my "No Hospital for Mr B" project. ++++++++  Our lectionary for Sunday, Nov 8 is leading into Advent season with its anticipation of the Second Coming, a faith event that I'm not going up on a mountain to welcome as many disappointed...

These are end of Thursday pictures from 7H porch this evening as the sun finished up and sank off beyond and behind the high-rise buildings on Thomas Drive to the west of us.  Others are to the south and looking east. The clouds were - - "spectacular" is too common a word. "Heavenly" is right, but still doesn't say it. The Bay is flat and taking reflections.  Several of them I posted to Facebook to share with FB friends. Here's one looking out toward the Pass, which from 7H is the other side of Courtney Point jutting out. Living here is an ever changing scene.  I got started on it this evening because of the heavy, dark storm cloud that was framing the magnificent beauty beneath it. Often over the years, the scenery here on St Andrews Bay is so startling that I imagine my father must have seen it just like this in his growing up years here in St Andrews, and I wish he could see what I'm looking at right now. This evening might be a Time like that. It all...

Who knows where life and Time will take us! Yesterday was Joe's birthday, he was born at Baptist Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida on November 3, 1960. My memories are focused on the moment the physician came into the Fathers Waiting Room and said, "You have a son." A few minutes later, a nurse arrived to show me a newborn and unwrapped him to show me that he indeed was a big, healthy boy. A bit later, standing beside our car in the parking lot, looking across St John's River at a constantly changing Shell Oil display. Red, orange, yellow, the scallop shell growing and bursting into SHELL. I was 25 years old. Then driving home in our car, the 1958 Opel Record two door sedan that I've pictured here now and then.  My mother was waiting at our house in Neptune Beach, a couple blocks off the Atlantic Ocean, with Malinda, two and a half years old. I told Malinda, "You have a baby brother!" To which she responded, "I know! And a sister!" Those were T...

Again, today is All Saints Day, when the theology of our Collect for the Day is that our virtuous and godly living determines whether we come to the ineffable joys, which is to join the eternal multitude standing around the throne worshiping and singing in a loud voice.  There's no reason for me to make light of this, and surely not of the Lamb, whose nature in Revelation is far, far different from the nature of the Lamb of God as revealed in the Gospel according to John, who introduces Him right up front, "Behold, the Lamb of God." How is He? The Lamb, what's He like, how is He? And is He like that because that's what you believe, does what you believe create the Lamb in your image of the Lamb? I wander down this thorny path because the Revelation of John (John was/is a common name, there's no reason except your unexamined certainties to think Gospel John and Revelation John were the same man) - - because Revelation John knows the Lamb that was Slain as a fie...

Above perhaps anything else in my life, I am the father of children. Whom I cherish deeply, of whom I am fiercely protective, about whom I never stop worrying. I have felt so ashamed of our military forces for the bombing of the school in Iran in which over a hundred school children, little girls, were murdered.  I have felt almost as much shame that instead of apologies for the atrocity, which was unintentional, a mistake, but avoidable and not an accident, our government has resorted to lies denying the act, which cannot be regarded as other than a war crime.  I have been appalled with early reports, which I do not know are true or not, that the Secretary of Defense and/or Elon Musk and his task force decimated a verification group whose function was to check proposed targets and surroundings carefully to make sure this sort of tragedy does not happen.  I am ashamed, I am ashamed, I abstain, I do not pledge allegiance, I do not salute authority that is so flippantl...

OMG, the coffee is good. A Navy lifeTime of enjoying it hot & black is tempered this morning by my stirring a tablespoon of Manuka honey into it. Supposedly there are medicinal qualities to the Manuka honey, and the AI character on Google okays it for a person of my description, provided I mind my sugar intake.  One eight ounce mug of coffee a day is my portion, in my Ember mug kept perfect sipping temperature hot for about an hour. Makes early predawn dark mornings fun and good.  +++++++ A priest friend invited me to contribute a short essay to his Advent project, pick a date, topic, bible verse combination. I waffled between "Journey" and "Wilderness" for an hour or so, then settled on "Journey" and let him know. Now I've been struggling to keep the length of it down before I email him the final write, which maybe I'll do the first week of November. It's for December 5, and I always worry that these things tell more about me than I want p...