If It Ain’t One Thing, It’s A Nother Now and then someone tells me they don’t see how I can get up and write something new and different every morning, that they would run out of things to say. Not so. There’s always something or nother. An Episcopal priest is handed numerous things to think about and write about and talk about, preach about.  To begin with, there’s the Lectionary. It offers four new and different preaching possibilities for every Sunday morning: Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel readings. There’s no possible way to use up all the sermon topics, so why waste them? Blog about some of them. This week, King David's affair with who-is-that-woman-taking-a-bath-down-there-knowing-the-king-is-watching. What a tramp. No wonder Uriah didn't go home to her. There’s the Collect for the Day, a different prayer to open each Sunday morning. In classical format the collect has an address to God that is a theological assertion ripe for commentary; a petition ...

John 6:24-35 24 ... when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 25  When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ 26 Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs ( σημεια) , but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ 28 Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ 29 Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ 30 So they said to him, ‘What sign (σημειον) are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ...

Short and sweet this morning, eh? Up at four a.m. -- a bit late -- for coffee and to check over sermon notes for eight o’clock and ten-thirty -- and now it’s five-seventeen and counting -- Ryan Lochte and the Gold -- looks as if Phelps maybe should have rested on his golden laurels and sat this one out. But, as he said, today’s another day. Go r, w & b. But no tooth grills allowed. On the home front, this morning we’ll read more of the Sunday School Bible Story of David. And this is not David’s most shining moment: David’s affair with Bathsheba, wife of his faithful soldier Uriah. The most shameful event in David’s life. It could be the basis of a finger-wagging sermon, except that Saint John’s gospel story of Jesus feeding the multitude in the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee outshines almost all other stories in the Bible. See you in church! TW+

Word was, UK had no intent to compete with the Chinese opening ceremony extravaganza of four years ago; but as it turned out, London outdid everyone ever. Incredible. And, of substance. Not only lights and color and a parachuting queen, but meaning, Message. Tops: hospital beds with children, dancing medics, pride in their National Health Service, blending J. K. Rowling, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, nightmares, and peace. In an election year, it stirred for me that America finances a decade of two heinous wars running at the same time, birthing hatred for generations to come, killing hundreds of thousands of humans, and saddling present and future with astronomical debt, yet makes a political battleground of providing health care for our own people. History will judge in the story of our Rise and Fall. With tickets to some events including a soccer match, Tass, Jeremy, Caroline and Charlotte are flying to London next week, staying with his parents, who are looking forward to seei...

Thunder in early morning hours. iTitan on the iPad shows thunderstorms coming across from the west. Most of it is out in the Gulf of Mexico, but listen for sounds of rain.  Starting this Sunday, July 29th, for five Sundays we will be reading through the Gospel according to John, Chapter 6, in which Jesus talks about himself as the Bread of Life. However, the story begins not with talk but with action. Jesus is walking in the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee. People crowd him. He wonders aloud about feeding them. One disciple says, “No way,” another disciple says here’s a boy with his dinner pail, just some bread and fish. Jesus takes it, gives thanks for it, and feeds everyone. Afterward, more action. He goes for a walk while his disciples get in their boat and shove off, heading home for Capernaum, rowing. Wind comes up, stirring heavy waves. Jesus walks out toward them on the surface of the sea. The disciples in the boat are terrified. Jesus assures them, “ἐγώ εἰμι,” I ...

Several years ago a delightful “ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN” “church sign war” circulated online. Supposedly an exchange between churches across the street from each other, running over several days or weeks, it was huge fun even though it was a spoof, as snopes.com pointed out, likely created on an internet church-sign-generator. For one thing, all the signs and scenes are identical, including the white car and red SUV parked down the block behind the “Our Lady of Martyrs” church sign; the same two cars would not have been parked in the same exact spot and relationship for days or weeks on end! OK, so it was a spoof, got me! But I loved it! In the spoof, the Catholic Church pastor was teasing the Presbyterian pastor across the street, who was taking it quite seriously and became more and more upset and incensed as the series progressed. It elicited interesting discussion in many homes, including mine, some of it serious, some lighthearted.  Our religion is a strange thing th...

The Episcopal Church currently has nine authorized Eucharistic Prayers (The Great Thanksgiving) for celebrating Holy Communion. Our oldest dates from Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s first Book of Common Prayer (1549), Rite One, Eucharistic Prayer I in the 1979 prayerbook, which we and many parishes use regularly for the eight o’clock service Sunday mornings. Like it, Rite One, Eucharistic Prayer II  (p.340) is in traditional language. Prayer II shifts from the sacrificial tone of Prayer 1 to more celebratory. It seems little used; and quite frankly, why the Church cast a new prayer in Elizabethan English escapes me. There are four Rite Two prayers, A, B, C and D, in contemporary language in the prayerbook. Each is different, has a different history and, if one digs a bit, somewhat different theology, because the theology is found in what is said.  From 1998 and authorized again by General Convention 2012, Enriching Our Worship 1 adds three more Eucharistic Prayers, des...

Adjective is a noun, how does one use adjective as a verb? Adjectivize? No? Who says? This font is Casual. My most customary font has been Helvetica because of wanting a sans serif font but needing one with an italics setting, which Helvetica has. Recently though, something I read adjectivized Helvetica with the word Ubiquitous, which is making me reexamine my box of fonts, because I won’t even drive a Ubiquitous car. My favorite serif font may be American Typewriter, but it also has no italics setting for logical reasons: with typewriters there were just so many striking keys, so we underlined when we needed to italicize. Anyway, Casual can’t replace Helvetica for me, because it has no italics slant. Not to mention that it robs any writing of any hint of seriousness; and cannot use Comic Sans MS, which the type world so scathingly scorns. Options: either take time to search and experiment or ask Jeremy. Yesterday was busy: out of town trip in driving white rain, exhausti...

Some days are ... On my retiring from the Navy in February 1978, a job offer came from a “beltway bandit,” one of many firms working government contracts around Washington, DC. With less than a dozen associates, this was a small firm doing business with various Naval systems command headquarters. They had a new contract in my field, so I worked that one with them then went off on my own. The firm’s founder and owner was a brilliant fellow who wore Supp Hose socks and drove a dark blue eleven-year-old Cadillac Sedan de Ville that he had ordered new without air conditioning (a waste, he said, open the windows). He never read the morning newspaper and driving to work mornings he never turned the car radio on, because he did not want his focus and frame of mind disturbed by depressing news about which he could do nothing.  His approach to the day imprinted me to an extent. My mother would tell bad news at the breakfast table, until I learned to say kindly, “Mama, there’s not...

Noah & Sons, Pty. Ltd. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31 KJV) At the end of each of the first five days in the first creation story, God looked at what he had done and saw that it was good. Then at the end of the sixth day, God looked at all that he had done that week and saw that it was very good, the divine imprimatur on creation, symbolizing God’s pleasure in what He has done.  Some generations later, as we know, God becomes disillusioned, The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them. ” (Gen...

Mark 6:30-34 King James Version (KJV) 30  And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught. 31  And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. 32  And they departed into a desert place by ship privately. 33  And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him. 34  And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things. Mark 6:53-56 King James Version (KJV) 53  And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore. 54  And when they were come out of the ship, straightway they knew him, 55...

C029, A049, 5:08 Anglicanism stands on Scripture, Tradition and Reason?? Anything else?? Jesus was constantly confronted by people who were obsessed with Tradition , with keeping and enforcing their religious laws, views, opinions and certainties. He was appalled that their Tradition was more sacred to them than love.  The obsession is still with us in the Church.  Sometimes we are thick and oblivious unto inconsistency and blindness. Sometimes we are a blessing, sometimes we miss a WWJD opportunity to be a blessing. Sometimes we seem incomprehensibly simple. It is becoming increasingly common across the Episcopal Church to invite and welcome everyone who seeks a deeper understanding of Christ to receive Holy Communion, notwithstanding the explicit provisions of Canon I.17.7 (No unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church.). The Church is divided on this, and it has been a subject at several General Conventions, including re...

Tass and Joe on Joe's Ducati

Monday, a sheet of ice twice the size of Manhattan broke off from the Greenland glacier. An opportunity. Homestead waterfront property, tourist resort with igloos, offshore gambling. Airport for small planes flying out from the mainland.  Mine glacier ice-cubes for sale to prestige restaurants.   As it drifts south and melts thinner, shift the business to ice fishing.     A vacation is a state of mind, and my vacations are spent at that oceanfront hotel at Waikiki Beach where the Navy sent me for a week's TDY in 1966, sitting in the breakfast cafe watching the waves and surfers while sipping coffee and enjoying half a papaya. Linda gets them for me at Publix.  At Bill’s funeral, Fred told something that rang a bell. In a restaurant, pay two or three or four dollars for iced tea when ice water is free? When Fred told it, people laughed, but I nodded my head, been ordering water only for years. Dr. Oz said order it without lemon though, because GOK where the...

Proper 11     The Sunday closest to July 20 Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Composed for the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, (presumably by Cranmer himself) this lovely, familiar and beloved Collect of the Day for Sunday, July 22 would hardly express the theology and faith of a 21st century progressive Christian. But the Church means it to help us gather our hearts and thoughts in unity for worship; and we Anglicans who cherish quaint old medieval things are always reluctant even to put Tradition on the shelf, much less flush it. So we say it, use it, pray it. No harm done, though this Collect for the Day...

Year’s Mind is the sacramental observance, remembrance, of someone’s date of death or date of burial. Roman Catholic, it also is a common Anglo-Catholic observance that Linda and I will honor in some way today. An old Jewish tradition is that those we loved live on through us and our memories of them. Louise Gentry Weller May 7, 1912 - July 17, 2011 Year’s Mind July 17, 2012 Sunset over St. Andrews Bay July 17, 2011 TW+

Ducati Early spring 1976 the Navy transferred us from Washington, DC to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. School was not yet out for summer vacation, so I went up first, hundred miles north. The U S Army graciously gave me a room in their BOQ at Carlisle Barracks; Linda, Malinda, Joe and Tass stayed behind in Fairfax until summer vacation started and the contractor finished our new home on the Conodoguinet Creek; and it was an easy two-hour-plus drive home to Virginia on Friday evenings and back to Pennsylvania on Sundays.  At first, Joe was not happy with the idea of the move, but he came up for an impressive tour of Cumberland Valley High School, which was several miles out Cumberland Pike, due west of our new neighborhood. Joe is a sociable person who makes friends immediately and adapts quickly, and by the time fall came, he was settled in, happily riding the school bus with new friends. Once, a few years on, when he arrived home from school later than usual and I asked why, ...

Because this week General Convention of the Episcopal Church approved trial use of liturgy for blessing same-sex relationships, bishops have sent out “pastoral letters” to be read in all services this morning.  Not only us, this is an issue in every mainline denomination, every single one. But this cannot possibly be a subject about which God is losing either sleep or sheep. For God is Love. If General Convention had solved the problem of theodicy, it would warrant a pastoral letter stirring up the congregation. T+

Life & Sabbath In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Lord God of our Fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, God of Moses and the Commandments, God of Mary, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: blessed art Thou, O Lord our God. Thy lovingkindness sustains the living, Thy mercies give life to the dead. Holy art Thou, Holy is Thy Name, and Holy are those who praise Thee. Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Host, heaven and earth are filled with Thy glory. Now, before the morning light, and as it dawns, lift me from cares, concerns and worries, to enjoy and honor the coming day, even to bless it as I am blest. Life glides by silently or races noisily, stirs waves washing ashore, and is gone. Overhead a bird screeches. I sit stunned. Nearby a woman weeps. Life goes on. Sabbath comes. Amen, so be it. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, the Holy One, Who has given us the gift of life and this day ...

Alfred & Bill Maybe we don’t often think about the fact that we have our life because of a certain other person. Much less does a sense of gratitude permeate our being as an ongoing thing. My uncle Alfred died at age eighteen, drowned in the wreck of the twin-masted fishing schooner Annie & Jennie when she hit a violent squall while transiting the Old Pass, on a bitter cold winter night in January 1918. My father, who was six years old at the time, remembered his brother’s casket resting beside the fireplace directly in front of where I’m sitting at this moment. My grandparents were so devastated by the death of their son, that in a couple years they left this house in St. Andrews, and moved up to central Georgia to get away from the sea. Over the next ten years they moved several times, penultimately to Pensacola, where my father met my mother, and they were neighbors in East Hill, friends, students together at Pensacola High School, sweethearts in a courtship that cont...

Indianapolis? General Convention 2012 convened July 5 and runs through today. In the news is that they approved the trial use of liturgy to bless same-sex unions. This was not unexpected and should surprise nobody. My particular interest in General Convention has been the resolution to amend the canon that authorizes various translations of the Bible for use in our worship. The resolution proposed to add the new Common English Bible and The Message. From reading convention updates, it appears to me that the Common English Bible is still in the running, and that The Message has been struck from consideration. The season finds me serving Holy Nativity Episcopal Church as Summer Priest while our Rector is away on sabbatical. There are two sides of this for me; first, that I am glad to be in +Time, alive and well and able to do this for the Rector and also for the parish; and also that taking on this honor is making my summer busier than usual. Enough busier with day to day m...

Upstairs Linda doesn’t snore, but she has a snore room on the opposite corner of the house in case anyone else does.  Apparently nobody snored last night, because she was still in bed asleep when I awoke just now. Heading downstairs for coffee, I stopped on the way and crawled into her snore room bed, thinking not to disturb her by creaking the stairs and not to disturb Joe, whose bedroom is near the kitchen. When Kristen was little, this was her room, with twin beds, and she and I slept in here. In the wee hours one night some years ago, I woke to the sound of driving rain, and constant lightning and thunder without intervals approaching from the west. Thinking “tornado,” I grabbed Kristen and ran downstairs to an agreed and designated “safe room” in the center of the house. It turned out to be a straight-line storm, quite violent, that drove a path about a mile wide as I recall, and caused substantial damage around town. Built by my father's parents in 1912-13 for a...