Vivat Imperator or Seizing the Moral High Ground  after Shock and Awe Origins of topsy turvy are obscure and John Kerry is a powerful advocate for trust me on this one . But topsy turvy defines Washington reason on attacking Syria for using chemical weapons. Politicians  against are for , politicians  for are against , not per reason but per blind political loyalty or blind hatred for the president.  It’s no longer about punishment for using sarin, it’s now about the American president losing credibility if he backs down on his red line statement.  If the US attacks Syria, nothing positive is accomplished in the Syrian civil war or for peace in the Middle East, more children are killed by our Tomahawks than by their sarin, Bashar is dared not cowed, relations with other nations are strained, USA is self-styled world policeman Ugly American, al-Qaeda in Syria is strengthened militarily and politically, excuses are contrived to atta...

Football hotdogs apple pie and ... Lightning storm delay, don’t care, an infuriating jab in the eye ESPN shifting to Ole Miss Vanderbilt last night from Gamecocks over North Carolina.  A win is a win, but the morning headline should say Gamecocks win 27-10, Clowney helps some instead of Clowney, 6th-ranked Gamecocks win 27-10. But a win is a win and it was a great game for a season opener.    No NFL fan by any means, but cut Tebow after he threw two winning touchdowns against the Giants ending it 28-20? Hopefully not, to participate in newly resigned misuse of the word. Four and five years ago who thought Tim would be hanging on precariously as 3rd string QB for New England. Facts are irrelevant, for a Gator, being for Tebow is like being for your brother. Team to hate: Denver Broncos. Bubba’s teams tomorrow, Buffalo (cheering not betting). Not watching BigBlue beat up on Central. Clemson. Got no patience for Gators v. Toledo cupcake star...

Is that You, God? Jeremiah 2:4-13 (NRSV) 4 Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. 5 Thus says the Lord: What wrong did your ancestors find in me     that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves? 6  They did not say, “Where is the Lord     who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness,     in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness,     in a land that no one passes through,     where no one lives?” 7  I brought you into a plentiful land     to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land,     and made my heritage an abomination. 8  The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?”     Those who hand...

Predawns. Love is something you do. First thing this morning is the corrected date for starting our new Wednesday programs at Holy Nativity: September 25th , not 18th . +Time post for yesterday is corrected. 75 F and 51% for August predawn is tolerable enough to return to the outside back screen porch for the first time since spring. Occasional car passes by on 9th Street, some poor soul on the way to work. Love: First Daughter gets the newspaper from the street, brings it over and lays it on our back porch.  Part of life is predawns. Navy years, in motels on our way home from Wherever to Panama City, Linda rousing our family while it is yet pitch black dark outside and having us on the road by quarter-to-four. That always happened rushing home to PC, never on the way back to Wherever. Mid-nineteen-forties in the 1937 Chevrolet fish truck with my father, on the way to south Florida to pick up bream or perch, early morning dark, still tasting egg br...

Clear at the moment, five o’clock, 72 F and 67%. More perfect and cool early mornings this time next month, late September? Google weather says today will slip down to 68 F by seven o’clock, then start up, 86 F by noon or so. Pleasant enough out here on the front porch, borderline sticky. Weather page has one of these for today and another one for tomorrow. Just before noon yesterday Joe wanted to drive out to Pepper Palace at Pier Park. Lunch was to be leftovers, so Linda stuck it back in the refrigerator and before going to PP at PP we had seafood at the Sandbar, on 79 at “the Y” just a block back from Front Beach Road. Linda had grouper sandwich, Joe had oyster basket, instead of my usual steamed oysters and steamed royal red shrimp I had a seafood caesar salad with clams, oysters, shrimp. Last time, I went there with a friend and he had that salad. It looked good and was, but arrived twice the size I remembered, enlarging today’s luncheon selection of leftovers. M...

After retiring from the Navy nearly 36 years ago, I was recruited to work with a so-called beltway bandit , a consulting firm in Virginia doing contract work for the government. It was a small company and I got to know the owner, himself also a retired naval officer. One day I rode someplace with him in his Cadillac, and noticed that it didn’t have a radio. No radio? He said his wife’s car had a radio, but he had ordered his car without a radio to prevent himself from turning it on as he drove to work mornings and hearing the news that inevitably would distract him, make him less productive, and ruin his day with things about which he could do nothing but worry and be upset.     During silent retreats this summer it was simple to do daily +Time blog postings. MacBook was easiest with a full size keyboard and process that is more intuitive for me, but when there was no WiFi there was always 3G for the iPad. My daily habit was to post to my +Time blog, then go to C...

SATB Proper 16    The Sunday closest to August 24 Grant, we beseech thee, merciful God, that thy Church, being gathered together in unity by thy Holy Spirit, may manifest thy power among all peoples, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen. Reworked from a Gregorian (590-604 A.D.) collect that the church not be disturbed by assault of the enemy, today’s collect prays that a united church may show God’s power throughout the world. Prayer for church unity seeming utterly futile, a better hope was expressed in the adult Sunday school class at Trinity, Apalachicola last Sunday morning when friend Kristin Anderson suggested harmony instead of unity . Harmony might mean Christians of all different views getting along and living peaceably together instead of behaving so badly toward each other and believing everyone else must be like oneself - the opposite of humili...

I Said Not To Say That Jonathan Turley and “Are You Ready For Some Football?” messing with the NFL, our crocodile tears about on the field injuries to our opponents v. gleeful thumbs down for Roman gladiators, stirs that CFB is a week away. Labor Day Holiday Weekend openers. Thursday, NC TarHeels. Saturday, Toledo Rockets and CMUChippewas, get serious, why do we do this? because we love beating up on and bloody thumbs down. MAC: loves die-for-dollars and ultimately there’s something christological about sacrificial lambs returning to class on Tuesday morning. Most semi-serious game, VaTechHokies, but my team will be Buffalo Bulls. Not to say “Go Pitt.” Schedule conflict. Auburn Tigers 2013 schedule: Saturday, December 7, SEC Championship Game, Georgia Dome, Atlanta. Sorry, Tigers, I’ve already inked in to preach that weekend. TW

From the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, Linda, Tass and I arrived in Apalachicola twenty-nine years ago this summer, as I reported in to become Vicar of Trinity Episcopal Church for the next fourteen years. Some months before we arrived I had wrestled with two calls, whether to accept this pulpit and Altar or St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. Linda had had her heart set on that beautiful old stone church, matching rectory, and stone parish house on a quiet block in that lovely Pennsylvania Deutsch Country town with the Amish folk near by and in easy reach of her Harrisburg friends. She had driven over from Harrisburg several times to imagine where our furniture would go and measure for rugs and draperies, and parishioners had arranged for Tassy's acceptance and gifted classes in the local school.  We had been just days from accepting that call when my mother phoned to tell me the Apalachicola pulpit was vacant. The story is longer than that, ...

Gametime category: ballots or bullets Jeopardy Answer: a stingless male bee that can’t even gather honey and is Good For Nothing but Mating A weblog is where one might rant opinions, hopes, anger, frustrations, disgust. My blog is peaceful, or that’s the intent, dissect some obscure Bible passage, cars I love, reminisce on Panama City half to three quarter century ago, political frustration. Sling mud at some creed. Sadness at how people stoop -- no slither  -- to treat each other and speak to and about each other when it’s anonymous. Horror at raging political wingnuts on Facebook, it’s about time to take it down.  Friends who suspect my politics also know my view that my views are neither more nor less valid than the views of anyone else with a mind. With a mind . Online, rude, arrogant, mindless certitude lacks humility, intelligence or humanity, any and all. Not to read it, much less comment and Become One . Here this morning with a post about cars, but...

“Hark!”   Harold the angel sings  As our spring 2013 Bible study season ended it was time for the aging retired parish priest to discern.  My weekly schedule had included -- as well as adult Sunday school and preaching at two services about one Sunday in three -- Bible study classes on Tuesday mornings and Wednesday afternoons, sometimes a grief support group and other evening counseling. It wasn’t yet exhausting again, but Harold my guardian angel harkened me back to my life history of gradually taking on more than I could handle until about every four years or so I had to chuck everything and start from scratch. Scratch in the old days meant shedding classes, clubs, memberships and boards and reverting to basic parish ministry, where the cycle would begin again. For summer 2013 I entered a prayerful listening and discernment process that was concentrated in three silent directed Jesuit retreats at three different Ignatian spiritual centers in th...

Interesting time to live through. Or at least to live in , we never know whether we are going to live through , do we. China turning back the clock, warning their people about subversive ideas and ways of the west. When we lived in Japan, 1963-66, electronic entertainment was limited (i.e., TV was in Japanese), so we had Armed Forces Radio. Or, evenings we could listen to Radio Peking telling us what Chairman Mao was doing, or what Premier Chou En-Lai had announced today, or where Vice Premier Chen Yi would be speaking tomorrow, and denouncing some running dog of capitalism for subversive ideas. Nowadays the Chinese people, at least in pictures, look as happy on the streets, and as colorful, as any crowd of Americans, and their roads are filled with Mercedes and Buicks. Economic interdependence, which is self-interest spread out, is good for peace. They’ll be serious when the Mao suit again becomes politically correct and obligatory. And Egypt, eh, bloody chaos and the milita...

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Saving several emails to read later, a delanceyplace.com piece on the Bill of Rights. And looking forward to this morning’s word.a.day after last week’s run of great words that were totally new. Not sure how to thread anatopism and allochthonous into conversation or text, but words are as worth discovering for their own sake as trying a new flavor of ice cream. After supper in Apalachicola on Friday evening, we went to Piggly Wiggly for ice cream and the girls selected vanilla chocolate chip cookie dough that was good trying a couple of bites even though I went back to homemade vanilla. From last week, however, quaternary could be useful in theological discussion about exalting the Theotokos into hypostatic union. At one of my Ignatian retreats this summer my spiritual director spoke of the Holy Spirit as Mary’s husband, and when I questioned, it was affirmed; so I reckon nothing is off the table.  In my inbox, also saving the Jonathan Turley column t...

We had supper, not "dinner," at a new place last evening. The Up The Creek Raw Bar is north on Water Street and take the -- is this the only elevator in town, I certainly never saw one here before, this is even more of a violation than the traffic light -- lift upstairs, it opens right into the young, packed and noisy restaurant. A long room looking east out across the Apalachicola River, and south toward the John Gorrie Bridge that Mayor Jimmie Nichols opened and I sprinkled holy water on in blessing -- what? -- twenty-five years ago? Tass had scrumptious crabcakes, she wanted two, but I also wanted one, and adding one to her order instead of ordering one of my own added four dollars to the bill instead of eight for just one. A delightful, atypical place for the south, nothing fried was on the menu. I had two dozen steamed oysters -- whether they were Apalachicola oysters or, in the water and harvesting debacle that eventually will kill The Bay, trucked in from Texas, I didn...

The summer of 1952 I spent at Camp Weed, the summer camp of our Diocese of Florida. Managing to finagle my way onto the staff so as to remain all summer with my best friend Jack Dennis, I was variously a counselor for Junior Boys, a counselor for Father Fred Yerkes’ Choir Boys camp, and on the kitchen staff. The most fun always was Father Fred and his camps. Archdeacon of the Diocese of Florida, the Venerable Fred Yerkes was from the Jacksonville end of the diocese, and he, with his younger brother Francis Yerkes who assisted him as a layman, held down about six small mission churches for which he was the pastor, and in each of which he held services every Sunday morning. I don’t know how many miles he drove a year, but he wore cars out and at least in the years I knew him, he always drove Chevrolet cars, always black. Father Fred was one of my heroes in my teen years.  The summer of 1952 Father Fred arrived at camp with a new 1952 Chevrolet. It was a Fleetline DeLuxe two doo...