DEPRESSED AND CRABBY? The welcome back to church yesterday was overwhelming: smiles hugs and loving words, applause and a sustained standing ovation. Others seemed as happy and relieved as Linda and I to see me alive and well, and my gratitude is beyond expression. +++   +++   +++ While I was in hospital after surgery, Linda and Joe attended a Cleveland Clinic session to help families understand what is normal for patients in the six months or more of recovery that will follow. They heard some advice on exercise and diet but what they brought back interesting was that patients recovering from open heart surgery often get depressed and frequently are crabby and irritable. As I understand it, depression often comes because recovery takes so long, progresses so slowly. I can’t visualize this happening with me. Being basically a sorry, lazy soul anyway, I am content to exercise prescriptively, tire easily, and couch-potato expertly. Yes, it’s necessary to step-by-step up the stai...

From Merry Christmas to Happy Easter! An old song I like is Paul McCartney’s “On The Wings of a Nightingale” sung by the Everly Brothers. In the album that appears on YouTube from time to time, Don and Phil Everly, seemingly in their late teens or early twenties, are walking through a junk yard looking at old cars. Finally they stop right in front of The Ultimate Find : a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible. It looks like aitch but when they finish it’s the most gorgeous ride imaginable. All through the video they are singing “On The Wings of a Nightingale” and as the song ends they are happily taking the restored Chevy for a spin. I don’t know which I like better, McCartney’s song or the classic Chevy.  Yes I do, but that’s not my point this morning. Two months ago, on Christmas Eve, Father Steve suggested I be the Celebrant at the main service, picking up at the Offertory, and I vested to do so. Unfortunately, that evening I was having such chest pains that I was popping a nitro...

I believe ... Somewhere toward the end of Ordinary Time I started rising at two or two-thirty in the morning. At the time it was very good for reasons I don’t need to repeat. The new habit lasted through Stoppage Time in Cleveland and was good then also. It’s still holding, though I might rather reclaim my years long enjoyment of waking promptly at four o’clock for coffee upstairs with Linda. But it’s +Time and I’m not the one with the whistle. As I start blogging It’s two-thirty-two and I’m downstairs by myself and no longer with coffee but a cup of decaffeinated tea steeping. Nevertheless, Life Is Good. Currently I am reading a book by a seminary professor and theologian who requires his students to figure out their values and their way of life, what it is that they therefore truly believe, and to sort those beliefs into a statement of their personal theology. Doing personal theology is common in EfM but I am having a new go at it based on his model. My initial predawn effort is ...

RAMBLING RANT COMPLETE WITH APOLOGY Seems like a time of apocalypse now doesn’t it. In the Middle East popular rioting against abusive government, already toppling a couple of governments, threatening and frightening the others including Saudi Arabia; currently in Libya fierce opposition to a crazed dictator, reports of unconscionable shedding of blood. In the southern hemisphere, earthquake with death, injury, destruction on a monumental scale in Christchurch, New Zealand. To many folks on the scene it may seem like the end of the world is at hand. New Zealand is a country where EfM is a big thing in the Anglican Church, and those of us on the EfM mentors’ listserve are reading almost daily conversation from and about EfM colleagues in New Zealand concerning the nightmare. Father Steve is in Haiti where a year ago a catastrophic earthquake caused the loss of over 300,000 lives, injured hundreds of thousands more, and left over a million people homeless, many of whom are still homel...

Are You As Good As Your Word? Glorious things of thee are spoken,    Zion, city of our God! He, whose word cannot be broken,    Form'd thee for His own abode: On the Rock of ages founded,    What can shake thy sure repose? With salvation's walls surrounded,    Thou may'st smile at all thy foes. Epiphany Season is time to discover and realize what Jesus is about so that the lightbulb comes on in your head. This year the Gospel teaching during Epiphany, both the Sunday Lectionary and the Daily Office Lectionary, is from Jesus in Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount. It is key Scripture for understanding the mind of the Savior, whose teaching is not about what we are to believe (that’s a later aberration of the early church fathers in their obsession with creedal hairsplitting); rather the mind of Christ is about how we are to treat each other. This means that the essence of Christianity is not the belief statement that we stand and...

My heart treatment experience left me with great confidence in the local cardiac community, the cardiologists and heart surgeons of Panama City. They have a fine reputation and I am told that from year to year they only have to send out of town three or four cardiac cases that like mine are so complex that they need to be seen by a major center. With me the doctors were very clear about what they would do and what they had decided to refer, and so earned my enormous respect and trust. +++   +++  +++  Church friends have been asking both by email and on CaringBridge GuestBook when I can eat normally again, when we can go out for dinner, to their homes, to restaurants. What can we say? For starters we can say “yes qualified” and “now qualified.” Unfortunately the qualifiers are heavy. So a good response is “Yes-But and Now-But and with a Be-No List.” We can’t leave my mother home alone anymore; someone must be here with her round the clock. Except when we have a CNA or ...

IN FLORIDA WE HAVE CAMELLIAS DON'T NEED A PENNSYLVANIA GROUNDHOG All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all. Each little flower that opens, Each little bird that sings, He made their glowing colours, He made their tiny wings. The cold wind in the winter, The pleasant summer sun, The ripe fruits in the garden, He made them every one; All things bright and beautiful ... It’s in-between-time. Camellias have been lovely, red, white, pink, mottled, my favorite is a bright red with single petal flowers, one grafted plant has white blossoms on some branches pink blossoms on others. Most special: a white-blossomed plant just beside the front steps. For years it languished with various problems including white fly infestation. At Bill Lee’s recommendation Linda applied to all the camellias a cygon treatment that she sprayed on each leaf and poured on the ground around each plant. Worked a mi...

Trees I think that I shall never see  A poem lovely as a tree.    A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the sweet earth's flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray;    A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair;    Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain.    Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. Growing up at At Cove School in the 1940s we sometimes had to select and memorize a poem and recite it aloud in class. “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer was popular for that, especially among the girls. It stuck in my mind, surfacing when I walk around our yard of many trees. They are not “mine” but part of property that is eternal. I am their steward of the hour. We lived in Southern California 1969-1971 during Navy years, and how different the landscape was, fewer trees by far. Summer 1971 we came home from California on PCS leave enroute to o...

Beatitudes and Woes Mountain or Plain? Standing or Sitting? Gospel for Today: Matthew 5:38-48 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also... Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you ...  Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. +++   +++   +++ Long as I’m musing this early Sunday predawn I might as well muse a Sunday School Lesson. Two questions to start then: where was Jesus for this Sermon, on a mountain or on a level place? And was Jesus standing or sitting as he spoke? The gospel for today is two teachings from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” which is not, as is com...