Doing a nice thing for myself, having a second magic mug of my club hot & black after breakfast. No reason, just because. Looking at our lectionary for this morning, Jesus in the Temple, I realize that I did comment earlier in the week, though not on the gospel reading, so I'll give it a shot.  Jesus in the Temple is a key thing for Luke; it's so for the other evangelists as well, but a lesser key to his identity than in Luke. In any synoptic, though, a scene with Jesus in the Temple confronting his adversaries clues us that the tension is building and Jesus' end is near. Matthew gets his 21:23-32 temple confrontation scene from Mark 11. The parable of the two sons that follows, which Matthew inserts between the temple confrontation and the parable of the leased vineyard, is Matthew's own. We don't know what Matthew intended, but maybe I'll come back to that.  First, the confrontation, which seems to end in a standoff, neither Jesus nor the priests answer th...

There was a film, memory slips because all I recall is one scene - - an elderly woman is dying (seems like I wrote about this a week or two ago but IDK and IDC), in her house in a village in must have been Italy or Greece. Noise stirs her, she opens her eyes, raises her head and looks up to see her neighbors, elderly peasant women who are not dying yet, dashing into her house, grabbing things that she soon will leave behind, and running out with them. To me it was shockingly unfeeling, but it must have been a custom there.   AI knows everything: "The film you are thinking of is Zorba the Greek (1964). In this classic drama, there is a famous, bleakly memorable scene where the elderly French innkeeper, Madame Hortense (played by Lila Kedrova), is dying of pneumonia in her bed. As she draws her final breaths, the local village women—who have been waiting outside like vultures—swarm into her house. They frantically run in and out of her room, pulling down her curtains, looting her fu...

  "What is life?" continues to eat at me this morning, Tuesday, September 22, 2026, 2:48 AM. The question is more basic at this hour and age, when I feel life centered here in 7H, and responsibility to a specific handful of people and no one else under the sun. If you wonder whether you are on the list, you certainly are, of course you are, how could you doubt it? Responsibility to continue looking after myself as best I can, that is; to take my meds, exercise a bit, mind my weight, get some rest, eat & drink mindfully, keep my leg elevated. Life Itself, though: now that I've surrendered all former responsibilities of life into the void, life is down to awareness: continue to take notice, respond when I DWP.  That's pretty much it. Respond or simply Abide, Be - - as in: I Am, kindly leave me alone see vou play.  ++++++ Last evening I was exhausted, lay down and turned out my light too early, so early as to be up first at eleven-something, back to bed fitfully wit...

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own. -H.G. Wells, writer (21 Sep 1866-1946)  Breakfast: warm meatloaf sandwich with mayo and salt. Potassium actually, not salt. Properly thick slice of meatloaf.  Warm and contenting, a Southern comfort food. Few ounces of water and four pills: an antibiotic, furosemide, potassium, and a prescribed probiotic.  Another sip of water with three volunteer supplements and a heart pill.  Is my leg getting better? It's a sure thing!   And the home health nurse is coming late morning to change the dressing on my weeping edema wounds.  At the same Time, there's a meeting in the HOA room downstairs about changing from WOW! to Secure Vision. As I read it, SV offers a substantial technical...

Even at the extreme old age of 91, a person needs to feel active and contributing, at least sufficient to pay for the air one breathes, nomesane?  Forty years ago, in another Time and place but not far down the coast, in my church was a peripheral parishioner, his parents were in church more often but he himself might be called a Holly & Egg Christian, with his own special way of speaking that involved injecting "nomesane?" at the end of every sentence. Not "nonesane?" every now and then, but to conclude every period single period sentence period with "nomesane?" full stop. Because he glanced at my face to make sure I'd understood him, I quickly  learned that my expected response was to affirm my following-along-ness, by either nodding my head or grunting "uh-huh" or "mm" in response each Time he came to, "nomesane?"  To this day, I can still hear his "nomesane?" as I let my mindset phase from irritation to a...

The conspiracy theorist in me says they're doing it to us again, pollsters predicting a runaway flood of Blue on Election Day, predicting with two intentions: that Blue will relax and not bother going out to vote, and Red will panic and get out to vote in record numbers. It's all good, folks, by the Time the End of Days comes everyone will have forgotten 2026, maybe even by ten years from now. No generation is as vital as they think, certainly not mine, this too shall pass and the sooner the better, eh? +++++++++ Not posting pictures of my right foot, but this morning for the first Time in more years than I remember, my right foot is normal size, same as my left foot: normal ankle, normal foot; five individual toes instead of a solid pen of inseparable fat piggies went to market. It's the meds and all credit to my doctor. My home med prescriptions include one antibiotic pill three Times a day, one double-dose lasix (furosemide) pill once a day, one monster pill of potassi...