Arrives in my email every morning Days of Praise , a devotional essay written by one of three or four members of a family in Dallas who minister as Institute for Creation Research. As I’m not a “creation science” Christian, the underlying theology doesn’t always appeal to me and, depending on how rushed my day is gathering itself up to be, I don’t always read it, but the essay is often quite good, and starting the day with a devotional moment is always good, and the writers are learned in Hebrew and Greek. At any event, one may better serve oneself by reading things one doesn’t agree with than always to read only one’s own viewpoint. Also, as my theology professor said that morning in class, “they may be right and we may be wrong.” This morning’s devotional essay is titled “Times and Seasons,” which sounds just right for New Years Eve, a transitional moment for folks worldwide. Time being a human perception, it isn’t really transitional, but we make and observe it as such though o...

What to think on this morning, what to contemplate? IDK.  Enough about Harbaugh, eh. I knew he does an annual mission trip to Peru; until opening an early email this morning didn’t know what it is. http://www.crossmap.com/news/one-hour-documentary-to-chronicle-jim-harbaugh-san-francisco-49ers-head-coachs-mission-trip-to-peru-11939   All family have been through the nearly six decades accumulation and picked out what they wanted, car loads for Goodwill today.  This must be what retirement is like. No sermon to write, no admiral’s meeting, no church staff meeting, no Bible Seminar, just pack up and give away. Some are skiiing in Colorado, some are wishing they were. Though not in winter, I want to go back to Maine to explore Waldoboro, the shipbuilding town where Andreas Wäller emigrated from Germany in the 18th century. Original name was Broad Bay. Other than that, keep watch over St. Andrews Bay. Oysters, mullet, I’m good. Gospel for next Sunday. We three...

If Full of himself, Johnny Manziel still and always a clown, what’s to say, grow up? Naanh. Manziel and Jameis. Seminoles scalp Ducks, drown in Dallas.  Game is serious business and basketball is seriouser as Duke with Mike Krzyewski, apparently highest paid college coach at $9.7m. Not to jinx, but If Harbaugh goes to Michigan at $8m then he will be CFB tops for the moment. Supply and demand, who wants a top head coach right off the bat to recover immediately from debacle can’t hire somebody else’s assistant or coordinator to get experience on the job. If Harbaugh , then no top high school athlete with NFL in mind will ignore the doorbell when Michigan’s recruiter rings. Coaches are pricey but CFB is gate and gate is big business to major universities, ask PennState. Are CFB head coaches overpaid? Not compared to basketball. Absolutely not compared to the incompetent clowns who scalped and bankrupted GM. Industry and banking CEOs skim the cream, a losing coach is out on h...

63F, 80%, wind at 0 mph and thirty percent chance of rain. At this hour and age and stage of life, everything about Grovers Corners is even more real than ever. When I first watched Thornton Wilder’s play on the stage of the old Bay High School auditorium it was poignant and wistful, the town, times and lives so ancient and quaint but still overlapping my world. A year or two ahead of me in school, the Stage Manager did a memorable job, his name slips my mind, but in starting to clear out the attic my four Bay High annuals showed up this weekend, I may thumb through and see if I can find him.  Our Town is my all time lifelong favorite stage play, above anything I’ve seen since in New York, Tokyo, London, Columbus, or at the Panama City civic center auditorium; grew even more so with the years of life. It seems to have become home and my own life, Grovers Corners has.    If life were to choose, if I could go to a time beyond me, say a hundred years from now, the e...

One of many pleasures of rising several hours before most of the rest of the living in the time zone is its opportunity to read, think and explore. Arrival of the world wide web means we no longer must keep a stack of books at hand, or an Encyclopedia Britannica, or wait for the public library to open, because virtually everything in books is at the fingertips of anyone with online access. Computer, smart phone, tablet. It’s all there if you look for it. So lately, including this morning, I’m browsing Tracey Rich’s website Judaism 101 to discover and understand Jewish heritage that underlies much of our Christianity, including what comes up in our lectionary readings. Any number of such websites are online, but because bias affects reliability, I check authorship first off and avoid those authored by Christians or so-called “messianic Jews.” It always pays to check authorship first anyway, and to dig a bit further if a bell rings even distantly or a light goes on even dimly. Trace...

Jake Wilson reviews The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and while I might rather read Roger Ebert, Wilson is right. Anyway, Ebert is dead. I also found the movies overstretched and disappointing such that I’m skipping this one and sticking to my love for the real Tolkien. Peter Jackson’s film trilogy Lord of the Rings was so excellent that I used it (first and third movies) along with Tolkien’s books as the basis for a year of Religion & Ethics classes on agape’ at Holy Nativity middle school a decade ago. But I didn’t see Tolkien in Jackson’s movie follow-ons to The Hobbit , so I’m done. Remembering Ebert’s title Life Itself: A Memoir , several chapters stirred memories of my own life, some overwhelming, some known only to me, some sheer imagination. Most of my books are bagged up and gone but I can still retrieve Ebert’s because I read it on Kindle, and it’s still there should I want to go there again.  Not just a Day, Christmas is a Season for remembering, whi...

White, no, but Right. Chilly -- about 46F on my back porch -- wind in the high pines down front as I walk to the end of the path to get Linda’s PCNH. Light already, Christmas has come and dawned because of going to bed after the late service last night. It’s all good, Life Is Good: for several years after moving home from Apalachicola, I felt in my heart that “Christmas doesn’t happen anywhere but Trinity Church” but it comes and dawns where love abides.  PCNH front page has a heading “Christmas Memories.” Too many and dear to stumble through without wanting to go there, to each one. The human mind allows that, and in sixty or a hundred seconds just now I’ve been back to a dozen of the best and worst.  From a ship off Vietnam, talking with family in San Diego over a goofy telephone where every sentence had to end with “over” so the operator could switch. You had five minutes so every crew member could get a turn.  Tiny beloved climbing into the doll crib Santa ...

Okay, 1:41, rain stretches systematically from Santa Rosa Beach to New Orleans and will sweep over us, looks to me like by dawn or before, depending on how fast it’s speeding northeast. Titan app shows green and some yellow, but no red: not too heavy. With Joe here we’ve been busy moving little SUV loads of stuff from the house down the street to our new home. Christmas tree here for supposedly our last time. Want a sea captain’s house?  Four master suites, two up and two down; three screened porches including second story looking out over the Bay, two living rooms, dining room but we don’t stand on ceremony so don’t call it “formal,” plus an extra room for whatever. Four full bathrooms; also a powder room was included when we did the 1997 addition, because my mother did not like visitors using her bathroom. Lots of cedar trees. Looks out over St. Andrews Bay and includes bayfront. Enormous kitchen in the 2002 renovation. Carport, poolhouse with heated Endless ...

Seven o’clock: it’s way too early to go up, you’ll be up at midnight, go work on your sermon for Sunday.  iTunes Gone Girl, Best of 2014, stirs Young girl, get out of my mind. UMich charitable IRA rollover is here. North Korea responsible for Sony hack, is there some problem with our drones, ratchet it up, Bozo, or don't you get it.  This isn’t reading like sermon preparation. Joe brought an interesting bourbon and for Tuesday night supper we had one finger twice, on the rocks. Supper: L goes grimly silent at my craving for Bradley’s country sausage, so I’ll cook it for breakfast before anyone rises. Taking after my grandfather Gentry, I grew up eating Conecuh sausage, and this is even better if that’s possible. I’ve not even tasted sausage for four years and suddenly manna from heaven. It does just as well in the microwave as the recommended time in a pan. Hint of yellow mustard not even a smear, just say “French’s” over it. OMG. Gospel for Sunday upcoming: L...

Eve of Christmas Eve, 67F, 98% and light rain. Unseasonal for anyone dreaming of a White Christmas just like the ones I used to know but this is what I knew. Bit dank in here, reach for that lap cover.  Instead of regular coffee, rerun with two spoons of a hot chocolate mix found while emptying a kitchen cabinet.  Anticipating “A Christmas Story” with Ralphie and his father’s 1937 Olds. Oldsmobile memories and browsing online for pictures of cars on the street when I was a boy brought up this series snapped in March 1952 by an LA Times photographer at a flooded intersection as cars drove through. Every car is known to me.  http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/03/10/sherman-oaks-california-1952/ In no particular order of the picture series ---  A 1941 Chevy, a Hudson, a Buick either 1951 or 1952 they were the same you had to see the taillights or if the windows were tinted green it's a '52.  A 1949 Cadillac turning, behind it a Crosley, another ’41 Che...

and it came to pass Wunderlich, 55F, quiet and Gevalia this morning. Keurig because Joe is here, his bedroom is downstairs, coffee grinding in my magic machine might wake him. Joe’s going on our walk with Robert and me this morning in a bit of the Cove neighborhood where I grew up. Same but more docks and boats in Massalina Bayou.  Oh, all dirt roads maintained by the city’s Caterpillar tractor, looked like this,  covered air-conditioned cab, get serious.  Roads were scraped maybe once a week. Its diesel engine could be heard growling its way round Massalina Bayou and we might run down to the lower part of the front yard and watch. Rounded at Hamilton and it came to pass in front of our houses, Waterfield, Sheffield, Guy, Weller, Moore... In the latter years the only thing paved was a couple of driveways, ours and the Sheffield’s, not solid just twin paved ruts, I remember when my father laid out the framing and did the paving himself, dig rectangles, 1x4 ...

Not Even Silence “DREGDRAWER FULL” says the readout on my magic coffeemaker, dregdrawer full, and 1:56 a.m. is way too early to make the noise of emptying it and risk waking Linda. Instead, I used her Keurig and am sipping a cup of Community Coffee. Mild, good balance, not intense as I might want, but black, nice and hot, does the job. It’s a Louisiana coffee that I met and drank that week of silent retreat August 2013 at the Jesuit Spirituality Center in Grand Coteau. There was coffee downstairs very early, it was Community. Comes in a red bag, and the Keurig pods have a red top. It’s fine, though I wish the pods or the whole bean bags were available with chicory as Louisiana coffee should be. However, not even Emeril’s kick it up a notch Big Easy pods are available with chicory. I wish they were. If I get three wishes, that doesn’t count though. This wish does count. Even in Harry Potter, anyone who died and went beyond the veil could not return. Not even in the magi...

All cleared out, no furniture left on the upstairs screen porch anymore, or I’d be out there with Saturday morning. Not as it brightens, the day is overcast. 52F and 79% is not bad, but the 6mph breeze --- . So I’m up here in the bedroom with the porch door open to enjoy. Looking into cedar trees through sparkling clean windows on the east side, out over St. Andrews Bay to the south. Trees have grown up, trees that pictures show were not here in the old days. Temptation is strong to cut every tree except the cedars and MLP, all of which have always been. Like the old eternal rocks. Like my favorite verse in the Trinity hymn that we call St. Patrick’s Breastplate, I bind unto myself today  the virtues of the starlit heaven the glorious sun's life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind's tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old eternal rocks. Cedars are different. Unlik...

Fifty degrees here, Kristen’s car is in the carport, and all is well with my world. Highlight of my day: her arrival yesterday afternoon, safely home for the holidays.  One of these mornings fahrenheit may be high enough comfortably to return to an outside porch to muse myself by blogpost. What to contemplate?  Cuber, as JFK called it with his Boston accent. WSJ has the best piece I’ve seen on it. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cuban-regime-is-a-defeated-foe-1418946550   Harbaugh. I may not be as big an MGoBlue fan as loved ones in Dexter, but Harbaugh has my uneasy hopes. I just hope if he comes he’ll stay his contract long enough to put Michigan back on the field. Incisive and entertaining piece by email this morning from my Navy and Michigan bud. http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/12047640/what-jim-harbaugh-give-michigan-fans   Torture in the news. That our enemy is some strange, new, unspeakable breed of inhuman subhumanity with no m...

In this vocation we have people, friends, people I love, all over the political spectrum. I have firm, even absolute convictions on most every subject, especially political, and when elections come round I vote my conscience and convictions. But I try never, from pulpit or even personal blog, to assert my views and their correctness. For one thing, it creates tension that I always regret and find was unnecessary and hurtful. For a main thing, I often find out that I was wrong. So I prefer to watch and learn than to pontificate. Cuba is different though. I have a friend who many years ago was brutally and cruelly humiliated by Cuban authorities in the process of leaving Cuba for the United States, and I respect that friend’s hatred of the Cuban regime and bitter wish never to see the U.S. make peace with it. I think the bullying brutality and cruelty were the rule, not the exception. Who wants to make up with bullies?  On the other hand, it is opposite to our economic and po...

Early Morning Frost During the First Gulf War and around that time before and after, the U.S. Navy sent out letters to some ordained ministers, inviting us to be Navy chaplains. The Army did that too, and one minister in Apalachicola resigned his pastorate to be commissioned an Army chaplain, and the last I heard he was quite happy in his new life and ministry.  The Navy sent me that letter invitation at least twice over a period of several years. Each time, it stopped me in my thoughts if not in my tracks. The idea went through my mind, I -- ruminated is the right word -- on it at least half seriously. Maybe because once you have been in a military service it becomes a part of your being , not just who you were but who you know deep inside, and who you like being and know that you always will be. I have been an Episcopal priest over thirty years, but I am first and foremost a Naval officer and have been so for 57 years this month, perhaps this very day, and as a retired...

Veni, Sapientia December 17? Various sources start on different dates, and I don’t remember and am certain of nothing, but according to at least one source, December 17 begins chanting the “O Antiphons” leading up to Christmas, first Sapientia. O come, thou Wisdom from on high.  Our Hymnal 1940 showed a date for each verse, but clearing out to move I’ve got books out of the house, have no idea where to find a 1940 to verify at the moment.   Sapientia, from Latin to taste, to be wise, homo sapiens, hominid who became wise by tasting. Jeepers, all the way back to Eve and Adam in the Garden tasting the forbidden fruit and becoming aware, wise, knowledgeable. I don’t know how far back into human folklore that creepy story goes, whether it dates way back beyond ancient Hebrew culture as do flood stories, but somebody at some point was entertaining the tribe around the campfire one evening explaining why, when other animals are so innocent, people are wise. Etiology tha...

60F on my porch, balmy innit. Everything brings something to mind; this me at eight or nine years old wandering in our back yard on December 24, short pants, barefooted and no shirt, wondering if time actually slows down on Christmas Eve to torment boys.  Pitch black and wind in the palms and cedars. Best I can do for myself at this moment is be out on the downstairs front screen porch and enjoy the creation. There’s the green flashing light, is that you, Daisy? It's dark and I can't swim that well, send  χάρων,  send the boat for me. My thought might have been for the dancing fingers to trip lightly over the Gospel according to Mark and what to talk about in this morning's final session of our Fall 2014 semester. But the little red flag flashing at the top right of the computer screen was CNN saying more than 80 people, mostly children, killed in a school shooting, and the distraction horror grabbed hold of me. It was the Taliban in Pakistan, where the world and...