Nother for Congress

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 that may reflect a hope for today or an anxiety of the Middle Ages; and a closing in the name of the Trinity. It may date back into the earliest centuries of the Christian Church. All sorts of things to muse on.

The Nicene Creed is a nitpicker’s heaven for blogging.

Not to mention the seriousness with which they take themselves at Episcopal Church General Convention every three years, most recently Indianapolis 2012.

Panama City and Bay County and St. Andrews Bay and Cove School are the center of my being, born and bred here, Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. Sitting down and reading or thinking about something that’s going on may take me back half a century to some memory or other. Just start typing. Remember the USO at the foot of Harrison Avenue?

Let me tell you about my operation.

Twenty years as a Naval officer, living here and there, including service during the Vietnam War and life in two warships. Admirals? full range, brilliance to idiocy. Remember the midnight exercise during RefTra in GTMO when, because Ensign Weller the cryptographic officer dozed in the crypto shack all night long, USS CORRY was the only destroyer in the squadron to get a Secret message to the bridge on time and had the highest ratings? Worst Christmas Day of my life? Aboard USS TRIPOLI off Yankee Station during the Vietnam War.

In the news: London 2012, the Olympic Games, our swimmers falling back. Assad in Syria. GOP hoof in mouth disease in Palestine. Nothing to blog about?

My mind is cluttered with car stuff, cars of the nineteen-thirties and forties that were on the streets during my growing up years. Am I the only one in the universe who knows the crucial facts that will make all the difference when St Peter asks the entry questions at the Golden Gate? Name the common and singular difference in the 47 and 48 Buick and the 46 and 47 Dodge? Anyone? Anyone? The color of the steering wheels. Difference between the 47 and 48 Fords? There is no difference. What was the Plymouth radiator cap emblem and hood ornament? Anyone? The sailing ship Mayflower headed for Plymouth Rock.

The world is at war and on the brink of -- what? Self-destruction, murder, mayhem and the futility of economic waste, inhumanity, and political insanity; and we’re overdue for a hurricane. Nothing to write about, are you kidding me?

Finally for blog posting, last of all and at the bottom of my list, election year: once again, the fools are out in full force. It is impossible to continue breathing and ignore politics even though this is sworn not to be a blog for political sarcasm. Nevertheless, my solution for America’s ills is a constitutional amendment for congressional office: serve one term and go home, serve two terms and go to the gallows.

Out of work, Nother? Run for Congress, you’re as qualified as the incumbent Bozo.