Old Rugged Cross   The nostalgia is long gone, over and done, but for years after we retired in 1998, my sentimental feeling this time on Easter Morning, as well as on Christmas Eve, was that Easter and Christmas did not happen anywhere in the world but Trinity Church. It isn't so: the dozens of children at Holy Nativity make up for anything and everything and are the ultimate crown on every Sunday morning! At Trinity, Apalachicola, our Holy Saturday was spent with Linda decorating the Altar with Easter lilies stacked miles high in her “mechanics,” racks we made for the purpose. Lilies at Easter, poinsettias for Christmas Eve, poinsettias over the Altar and the Altar itself covered with fat candles of many sizes, flaming brightly, strikingly lovely. Easter and Christmas, Linda had done the same with the Altar at our church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Easter was most especially special because of the huge cross we’d built with beams from the old house our Methodist neighbo...

God Will Provide Himself  the Lamb for Sacrifice Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Almighty Father, have mercy upon this thy family for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed, and in accordance with your will delivered into the hands of sinners, and suffered death upon the cross .  +++   +++   +++ ... God tested Abraham, and said, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Mori′ah, and offer him there as a sacrifice upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; and he cut the wood for the sacrifice, and arose and went toward the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. Then Abraham said to h...

“... For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.”   Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18) Anthropologists and philosophers define postmodernism as denying that absolute objective truth exists, as asserting that truth is subjective and varies as we see things. This is not whether the sun and moon exist. Nor is it Plato defining a table, but it may be his Cave in that how one sees the shadows on the wall depends on where one is sitting in the cave, and when I nap or blink my eyes or sneeze compared to when the man chained next to me blinks his eyes or naps. Or sneezes. Just so, religiously, how we see, know and experience God, our Truth, may depend on when and where we were born and raised. And our Truth may change. My Anglican Christian Truth will not be the same as my fundamentalist Christian neighbor’s Truth or as my Muslim neighbor’s Truth or my Jewish neighbor’s Trut...

Blaupunkt radios from Germany were big sellers and cheap in the Navy Exchange when we lived in Japan, 1963 to 1966. Interesting, shiny bent wood designs and sitting on little peg legs, they were modern looking for the day, and the sound was good. Now and then there are similar items on eBay, not that we’re interested, there’s enough stuff in our house already. Soon after arriving, we bought an AM/FM/SW table model Blaupunkt with short wave band. It sat on a corner table in our dining room and was the radio we turned on that Saturday morning in November 1963 when Bev Hatchett, a neighbor across the cul-de-sac, phoned to tell Linda that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. Friday afternoon in Dallas being Saturday morning in Yokohama. When that call came from Bev, I turned on the Blaupunkt and rushed across the room to turn off the little black and white TV with rabbit ears, on which Malinda and Jody were watching a favorite Saturday morning Japanese cartoon Tetsu...

Wednesday in Holy Week O Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his back to the smiters and hid not his face from shame: Give us grace to take joyfully the sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be revealed; through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. The DoD decal on my windshield is more than admission to military bases; it and the primary ID card in my wallet are outward and visible signs of an inward and personal being of which those who have them are never unmindful. It was gratifying to see General David Petraeus emerging humbly from his exile. As a leader and a man he has been held up beside General Eisenhower, a comparison that is not unfair to either one. Different circumstances might have seen him going higher as Ike did in our time. It could be both well and refreshing to see other than ambitious politicians at the top for a chan...

See the USA in your ... Buick Personal spiritual reading for Holy Week 2013, Were You There? by Ross Saunders. The paper's here. Holy Week news of the instant North Korea orders artillery to target US. forces. Li’l GeeMoe has a death wish.  U. S. Supreme Court takes up gay marriage. Fred Phelps moves across the street to hide in a closet over there.   Italy’s highest court overturns acquittal of Amanda Knox. Devastation in Seattle. GM to offer refined Buick LaCrosse this summer for U.S. and China markets. Buick sells four times as many Buicks in China as in the USA. But my Buick was made in Germany. Convenience store in Franklin County, Mississippi keeps pickled pig lips in a jar for sale next to the cash register. Presumably, the opening at the other end of the pig goes into the scrapple as -- pork parts. Bon appetit. Tuck in. Death penalty demanded for Puxatawney Phil, who lied about spring yet one more time again....

Often and widely misunderstood over the centuries,  The Revelation to John is not a prophecy for the ages about the end of the world as we know it, but an apocalyptic writing, which it was not uncommon in that day and age (c.a. 90 AD?) for someone to write to encourage and give hope to (and even scare the daylights out of) people who were suffering through a time of great trouble, oppression, torment and fear. With some disagreement about what was going on at the time, argument because of uncertainties about the document's date, and who was Roman emperor at the time, and the story's christology, and the disintegration of Jewish Christianity that was underway for various reasons, a likely situs may be the persecution of Christians by officials of the Roman Empire after Nero (54-68 AD), during the reign of Vespasian (69-71 AD) and/or Domitian (81-96 AD).  Revelation is a book of frighteningly vivid imagery and symbols, much of the imagery (such as The Beast ) and symbolism...

Introspect: the Sunday of the Passion Half a century ago this very spring, an ethics course at the University of Michigan defined pornography for me. Porno (Greek, evil ) and graphy (Greek, writing ). The case was a front page newspaper headline and photograph of a little boy on his tricycle who had just been crushed under the front wheel of a car. It may have been news for many, may even have sold newspapers, but in a way, and to an extent, the event ruined my life.  The abiding horrific image. And not only of the little child, but of what people can be, and are. And can do. Even what entertains us.   My memory and the debilitating mental image of standing on the flight deck of USS TRIPOLI that day off Vietnam, now seemingly a hundred years ago, watching as our Marine Corps helicopters landed and brought aboard for medical treatment in our ship's hospital, a dozen or more little Vietnamese children who had horrendous injuries and war wounds -- is another.  ...

There’s a piece in the Washington Post this morning about a polyamory movement in the Unitarian Universalist Church. In a paragraph down lower in the article there’s the statement that the UU have no dogma -- by which they meant that as far as belief goes it’s everyone for him/herself; what the UU have is not a clutch of squinty-eyed people obsessed with whether the person in the next pew believes the right thing or whether the neighbors need a camera over their bed; what the UU have is community, a community of openminded folks who are in favor of -- well we used to call it mankind but the word today, still a little awkward to me is -- humankind . Humanity. I like that. Episcopalians also have no dogma, not all of us realize that; we do not have dogma, but we do have doctrine. Dogma is belief that is laid down by church authority that, if you don’t believe it you are not in good standing. Doctrine is commonly held belief of the Christian body at large. The RCs have the dogma...

No Maybe to it We are all aging, but surely no one else is growing this old. The heart episode two and a half years ago put me in a different mode when other things arise; e.g., poor night vision, so visiting the eye clinic to get a new eyeglasses prescription only to find out the problem was not eyes but droopy eyelids keeping out half the light. Eyelid muscles stretched with age, surgery required to tighten them so the lids will stay up for better vision, but surgery required advance approval by the cardiologist. What next? Next actually was a haircut, then late lunch at Hunt’s Oyster Bar for two dozen steamed. They do it so well that I no longer miss raw oysters on the half shell. After the first one, two drops of Tabasco into the empty shell then dip each oyster in Tabasco, dip in lemon butter, pop in mouth. Don’t share these with anyone but Kristen. My best oyster experiences. Nicked from the iced gallon bucket in our fishhouse in the 1940s. Sometimes those were Apal...

Well alrighty then, so these blog postings are discursive, jumping from topic to topic sans connective; it’s how the brain works at this age. At least it knows when to use a comma, when a period/full stop, when to engage that most useful of all punctuation, strong comma or weak period, the semicolon. Yet, too many semicolons is like excess exclamation points: hints of insanity. If worrying were my responsibility, it might be about Li’l Moe in NKorea, a hysterical would-be bully playing army, who loves his picture posing on a horse or leaning over a wall gazing intently through binoculars.  Li’l Moe is ranting more and again this morning. Instead of fawning, his generals should either arrest him and put him in the nut house or send him over to one of our armed forces staff colleges where he can learn that warfare is no longer about parading tanks, missiles and nukes and standing on a dais saluting grandly. Li'l Moe continues to dress understated like Hitler; but when ...

Today is the final session of our current Bible Seminar, when we’ll finish reading and discussing The Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s sequel to his gospel. We’ll read Acts chapters 27 and 28, Paul under arrest and boarding a ship for Rome to make his appeal to Caesar. It’s late into the autumn of the year, and the winter storms of the Mediterranean Sea are an ominous danger. Luke tells a great story of Christianity’s beginnings, of which we in our generation are simply another chapter. Linda, Tass and I arrived in Apalachicola, Florida the last week of July 1984, where I was to be the Vicar of Trinity Episcopal Church for the next fourteen years. It’s an old historic church, in one of Florida’s early towns, with a quaint and interesting history. Our first week there, I read the history of the parish, the church building’s origins in the white pine forests of New York state, being cut and brought down the eastern seaboard in sailing ships, offloaded in what was then the third larg...

Pint o’ Bitter Lots of heavy wave action going on down front this morning. Still too dark to see, no ships passing, no wind either, tidal maybe. “If our situation were better than this, we would surely remember that day when the Americans came to free Iraq and gave us the chance to build a better future,” Mr. Shimari said. “But the Americans didn’t give us that chance. They did all the things possible to ensure that Iraq is going to be ruined.” Baghdad man on the street this tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, with enormous crimes against humanity we left everything worse unto hopeless, instead of loved and admired we are more hated than ever in our history, and the war criminals are arrogantly at large. From HuffPost today, the essay of the hour, day, year: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lt-general-robert-g-gard-jr-/the-end-of-endless-war_b_2907524.html And this letter in which truth is totally honest truth: http://www.truthdig.com/dig/ item/the_last_letter_201303...

Several innocent souls read my nonsense, and not unlikely what they’re looking for is words of holiness from the holy man, not his rants into his political or social extremism. Nor his peculiar curiosities and phobias. Astronomers (in my next life my destiny is either astronomy exploring distant galaxies and beyond into the multiverse, or meteorology chasing hurricanes and tornadoes, not theology BTDT) have found out that stars were formed much sooner after the Big Bang than was previously known. Fascinating to contemplate. Less fascinating and singularly unilluminating, even appalling if one lets it be so, are the inane and certitudinous Comments one reads by scrolling down under online news. It’s possible to find God in cosmological exploration, but not in mindless religious certitude, which is like crawling into a garbage can, curling up, and pulling the lid down tight. What do I love most about Anglicanism? Scripture, Tradition and Reason : we don’t check our brai...