No Ifs, Ands or Butts

Tit for Tat

Proper 19 The Sunday closest to September 14

O God, because without you we are not able to please you,
mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct
and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and
for ever. Amen.

Dozens of kind folks wished me happy birthday yesterday, Facebook, email, cards, e-cards. Friends, relatives, loved ones from California to the New York Island, and a Navy colleague and dear friend from years back. Thanks, all!

Birthdays come and pass and the prospect of three score and seventeen candles on a cake is frightening. More so is to live and witness from an age when America was loved and admired around the world, as between and after the World Wars when we were helpful to many nations, into a time of being almost universally hated. Edward Gibbon comes to mind as prophetic.

Mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts skips a beat when rocks are turned over and Christian hate groups crawl out from under. The F Phelps Junior, T Jones, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula ilk will provide text for the ben Gibbons sequel.

“Innocence of Muslims” is still on YouTube this morning, 13 minutes 51 seconds of trash, skubalon, rubbish. We can’t fathom the incomprehensibility of claiming to be a peaceful religion while raging, rioting, burning, destroying, murdering because a book is burned, or a page torn out, or a trashy movie is produced by some anonymous convicted felon. They can’t fathom our notion of freedom or our countenancing what we know full well they will see as blasphemy and go berserk about. So hatred reigns.

This week’s violence against us will subside like a volcanic caldera, biding until the next opportunity to take offense. Perhaps it’s time to legislate against fomenting hatred.

King’s Speech, Prince’s A, future Queen’s B, and Common See. It’s your Royal Highness the first time and after that Ma’am as in ham, not Ma’am as in palm. No ifs, busts or butts about it.

Meanwhile, Kersey is gone and Marcincin is gone but even with Ficken kicking, if O’Brien can’t beat Navy in Happy Valley today he needs to start packing.