Again, tomorrow the church observes Pentecost, fifty days, fiftieth day, in Judaism after Passover, in our tradition after Easter and one of the seven principal celebrations of the church year. Those of a mind to do so may wear something red to church - - red is my favorite color, but I don't think I have anything red to wear, so I'll just be regular.  Maybe I could go back in the vesting room and take my fiery orange red stole with the flaming dove on it and wear that: at this age I can do pretty much anything I DWP and get away with it, but someTimes I pause to rethink before going off totally bizarre. No, the stole is a liturgical vestment, I won't wear a priest's stole over my regular street clothes. Anyway, Pentecost, in Christian vernacular "the coming of the Holy Spirit" upon Jesus' disciples, and, therein theologically, the Spirit's coming into and enlivening the newly aborning Christian church - - perhaps very much like the Spirit puffing/puff...

Coming up the Day of Pentecost this Sunday. In Jewish tradition Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover. In Christian lore, the story in the Book of Acts (see it below, scroll down), Pentecost marks the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus' disciples. Pentecost is sometimes called "the birthday of the church."  The lectionary (list of readings) for the day offers several choices, options: choice of Collect for the Day, choice of OT/NT readings, choice of Gospel readings. I selected from the options to post below (scroll down) and possibly comment on. Parish rectors and/or preachers will make their actual selections: being neither anymore, as a fully retired parish priest, I do not know what we will hear in our local parish. ++++++ A preferred breakfast this morning: fried catfish from the deli at the Sweet Bay Publix. Now that they offer fried catfish I no longer have to mourn its demise at the Piggly Wiggly deli and at the defunct Winn-Dixie deli now Aldi's. Tw...

  May 2026, can you imagine? Today, Friday the Fifteenth, is Robert's ninety-first birthday, who'd have thought?! As children, we grew up together  on Massalina Bayou and were at each other's birthday parties when we turned seven, eighty-four years ago. Classmates In the Cove School class of 1949 we both love Cove  School, where together we suffered third grade with the exacting Miss Ruth Martin but endured, and together we love shared memories of eighth grade with Miss Virginia Parker.  In our aging years, Robert arranged and hosted class reunions, including fish fries at Cove School.  At one year's reunion, by unanimous acclamation, Robert was elected President for Life of our Class of 1949. Another  year, maybe our last reunion, Miss Parker joined us.  In the old Time, Virginia Parker was the pianist at St Thomas by the Sea Episcopal Church in Laguna Beach out on the west end of Panama City Beach. As the priest at St Thomas, I visited Miss Park...

  When it comes to mimd, mornings during nesting season I check the status and what's going on with the osprey nest in Longmont, Colorado at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. This morning the wind looked high as the nest swung back and forth above the pond.  A couple days ago I got a screenshot , early of the male bird sitting on the eggs. Mostly mom bird does it, I reckon it's Women's Work except when she needs to fly off and do her business. In the photo above, she's back and sitting on the perch for a bit before she moves over to the nest and shoves the male off the eggs.  Male and female are easy to tell apart, the female has the brown nest feathers in a "necklace" across her chest, the male's chest is all white. Maybe I'm not "there" as much as I've been in the past, but it seems to me that this male bird doesn't stick around as much as the other males I've watched there over the years; although I don't think the mom bird s...

No doubt it’ll require pausing now and then for thought, but maybe this’ll be the FYI List blogpost I’ve been thinking to write. Or maybe the mind will wander off again as usual, IDK. Probably wander, eh? Don’t send me messages on Facebook Messenger: it’s all locked up because of spamming I’ve encountered, so if you write to me on FB Messenger I don’t receive it.  A cloudy day and a pitch black dark predawn are as beautiful as a sunshiny day. Especially here in 7H. True to my favorite proverb, my life’s work as a nonagenarian is seeking the truth and loving the search. The proverb challenges “seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will” - - I’ve found it very costly indeed, but I prefer the cost, disillusionment, to living with illusions and nonsense. I live with the realization that I know nothing. It’s very freeing. I find AI online to be a good source of personal medical information: when I Google medical questions AI gives me straight answers instead of “oh, we don’t ...

One of the seven major celebrations of the church year, The Ascension story is on our lectionary calendar for this coming Sunday. Visualized elegantly in the above painting by Salvador Dali, it's told at the end of Luke's gospel, then more extravagantly at the beginning of Acts, which is our lectionary reading.  Over the ages of the Christian church, the Ascension story has been the object of many works of art, much of which features what is whimsically called "the disappearing feet" with disciples standing or kneeling to watch Jesus' feet vanish into a low cloud. Some of the art includes Jesus' mother Mary, the woman clothed in her traditional blue.  "Why is it necessary for Jesus to ascend bodily into the sky?" is a great discussion question for an adult Sunday school class or small group Bible study to explore. Often coming out in those discussions is the inspired suggestion that, like the stories of Jesus raising children from the dead as Elijah ...