\ Bells, we had sanctus bells at church today, rung as is historic at the elevations during the words of institution in the eucharistic prayer: blessing the bread and showing it to the people, blessing the wine and showing it to the people, showing the consecrated elements to the people at the prayer's conclusion.  At a parish I served decades ago, the first Time the rector had the bells rung, a staunch protestant low churchman parishioner protested to the rector: "There is no place for bells in this parish." But the bells are always appropriate and celebratory. There is nothing magical about ringing the bells (although their sound is magical to me); the bells' purpose is entirely practical: to call the people's attention to the elevations that are happening at the altar. In the olden days of the Latin Mass, ordinary people didn't understand what was being said, and (often standing through the entire service, seating, if available at all, might be benches arou...

What? we watched the Artemis 2 spectacular from start to finish including, yesterday into last evening, the reentry, splashdown, exit of the crew, their helicopter flight to the waiting ship and walk across the flight deck. it was quite a feat, especially so because there was a Canadian Air Force officer aboard as one of the four crew members.  This is, we are, Earth, Earthlings: for the ongoingness of our continued existence nothing matters more than that we advance beyond our warring anthill mindset and live together, Make Earth Great Again. Earthlings, at least western nations, seemed headed in that direction of interdependent internationality from the end of WW2 until fairly recently when grotesque evolutionary cultural mutations manifested king ants. There are queen ants, no such thing in nature as a king ant, but they have emerged and are emerging here and there around the globe. In some near future history of After People, the phenomenon may turn out to have been natural, ev...

Fog, it's fog season again. Sandburg, right? Carl Sandburg. "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on."  He must have been thinking of Chicago fog, eh?, not ours. Our fog doesn't move on, it stays for the season it defines for itself about this Time every year. So, it's good, fog season, I like it. I'm not at sea, nor going up in the air Junior Birdmen, and trying to avoid driving in it.  Lost, I've lost my train of thought for this blogpost, haven't I. Yes, I have, it's rhetorical, so on my own I reckon a question mark is not essential. And not only has my thought evaporated, the large chunk of panettone I ate with my mug of hot & black has caused my bp to plummet, shutting my brain down, so back to bed for a short winter's nap this early morning 2025, on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.  ... and may all your Christmases be white fog on Christmas Day in the morning. For lif...

O holy night: happy Christmas to all. Not getting out into anything that lasts until we have to drive home after dark, we are at home here in 7H watching online our parish church's Christmas Eve spectacular long titled "Holy Commotion" and living up to its name. They are all good, but in my memories, the absolute worst most pathetic have been the sweetest, dearest and best.  There was a Time, Christmas 1984 to Christmas 1997, when I was very sure that Christmas did not happen anywhere in the world but Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola, the worship, liturgy, spirit, music, choir, musicians were that perfect. That feeling held on in me for many years after my October 1998 retirement. But watching and loving the little characters on show at my old home parish, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, stole my heart away. We have a beautifully decorated Christmas tree here at home and loved ones are coming tomorrow to open presents and for Christmas dinner, and it me...

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...

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...