Isra Soon after WW2 this true story was published, it may have been in Reader’s Digest . On a train trip to visit Herr General at his post, the wife and little twin sons of a German army general had by some mistake boarded the wrong train. The destination was a concentration camp debarkation point, where they were stripped naked and shunted off to death with the Jewish women and children. My initial reaction was one of horror that such a tragic mistake could be made, before the divine irony hit me. Atrocity of horrors, a teenage boy, a college student and his older brother drop package bombs near the end of the Boston Marathon. Moments later they explode the bombs, killing and maiming innocent people. There is no nonsense about “alleged,” the two are recorded in the act, identified publicly, the older brother killed trying to flee, the teen apprehended. Now, months later, it’s not about “guilty” or “not guilty” but about a suitable penalty: death or not-death. It isn’...

Cory Remsburg. This is for Cory, and for every American injured or killed in the wars since 9/11, and for every American who has been there fighting against those who hate us unto death, and for every one who has been there protecting Cory and each other and us.  This is not for those very few who have brought disgrace upon themselves and shame upon us. This is not for them. This is for the good guys and gals, and there are many, many of them. This is for Cory Remsburg and friends. Our nation's history is filled with them, today and yesterday and yesteryear. We are right to be proud of them, to honor and salute them.   TW 

CANCELLED. THE WEATHER TURNS OUT MUCH WORSE THAN I ANTICIPATED WHEN I WROTE MY BLOG POST AT FOUR O'CLOCK THIS MORNING. WE CANNOT SAFELY GO OUT, AND NEITHER CAN YOU. SO, WITH APOLOGIES, OUR NOON SERVICE, LUNCH AND BIBLE STUDY AT HOLY NATIVITY ARE CANCELLED FOR TODAY, WEDNESDAY, JAN 29. TOM WELLER+ So what else is new? Still contemplating the life and death of Pete Seeger and his notion that the world can be changed as well with a song as a gun. Just re-read the transcript of his 1955 appearance before HUAC, where his lack of cooperation brought his being held in contempt of Congress on ten charges and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment on each charge, to be served concurrently (for a kindness I reckon?). I wonder if anyone despises officious politicians as vehemently as I do? Pete’s sentence was dismissed on appeal, but one could scarcely imagine a higher honor for any American than to be held in contempt of Congress, assembly of the sleazeballs of the universe. No kidding, I wo...

Goodnight, Irene There’s a headline: Pete Seeger, folk singer and activist, dies at 94, there’s a bit of American history of our own age, what went on, what came down, where we were, what we were doing, and WTF were we thinking. It no longer surprises me that Wikipedia keeps up to the minute of death, so the article on The Weavers just now was like standing at the window and again watching the parade that went by during my own lifetime. Pete Seeger, what a live, living, scrappy character. Looking back with Pete, I can see he was right and I was wrong. Pete’s kind help deter our certainties.  Pete jarred me four years ago when the nation celebrated his birthday, and then again more recently, maybe it was when he turned 92 and was on television. And he did it again this morning when I opened the news online. It was jarring, is jarring, I didn’t like it, don’t like it, don’t like what it does to me, where it takes me, I don't like going there. Pete puts me back at sea, in Wes...

Names haven’t been changed to protect the innocent, because they weren’t  bloviate (v.)   1857, American English, a Midwestern word for "to talk aimlessly and boastingly; to indulge in 'high falutin'," according to Farmer (1890), who seems to have been the only British lexicographer to notice it. He says it was based on blow (v.) on the model of deviate , etc.  It seems to have been felt as outdated slang already by late 19c. ("It was a leasure for him to hear the Doctor talk, or, as it was inelegantly expressed in the phrase of the period, 'bloviate' ...." ["Overland Monthly," San Francisco, 1872, describing a scene from 1860]), but it enjoyed a revival early 1920s during the presidency of Warren G. Harding, who wrote a notoriously ornate and incomprehensible prose (e.e. cummings eulogized him as "The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors") at which time the wo...

No adult Sunday school this morning, our combined Sunday school and Confirmation class is attending the annual parish meeting. Battin Hall, between services, with a nice continental breakfast. We’ll resume our wonderful class next Sunday morning. Meantime, my PreLent Retreat that is more mental than physical. That is to say, I’m not walking down front to sit by the Bay and read and contemplate, and swat mosquitos, wave gnats away and brush ants off, or wandering around monastery grounds and cemeteries to note old grave dates as I did last summer. natus. ingressus. obiit. Yet, like those Retreats, most of this Retreat is inside, within me, not the physical part, though last summer I made a point of heavy exertion at the first and third retreats.  But here I am. Have to keep the mind working. Doing nothing mental leads down, down, way, way down. What brings that on? Maybe the season: with Longfellow, The day is cold and dark and dreary. But more than the sky is gray. Eigh...

From The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism * a friend sent me a paragraph describing the first cars in the White House stable of Roosevelt turned garage for Taft. “... Taft converted the stable which had held Roosevelts jumpers, pacers, and calipers into an oversized garage for his Model M steam touring convertible, a Pierce Arrow Limousine and a Baker Queen electric which Nellie learned to drive.” I have long known about the large White steam car that President Taft (1909-1913) purchased,  but the others surprised me into searching for pictures. Taft's Baker electric apparently is still in existence, privately owned.  The Pierce limousine dates before the streamline-design headlamps later built into the front fenders, which became a signature for recognizing Pierce Arrow cars.  About 1903 to 1913 was the “brass era” of American cars, and there were some real beauties. That's a ...

January 24th is my sister’s birthday. I remember when she was very, very tiny, a head full of tight, thick blond curls, adorable in a pink dress that mama made and embroidered. Happy birthday, Gina! May the Good Lord bless you! Three years ago at this very moment I was lying on a gurney in a corridor outside my operating room at Cleveland Clinic, watching my team of doctors and nurses and aides enter and move around busily as huge machines are rolled into the room being made ready for me. Up well before dawn, I was first in line for the day. A physician came and introduced himself as my anesthesiologist, and started a drip of some sort while I waited there in the hall. My only possession was a bottle of nitroglycerin tablets, which I was clutching in case the chest pains started, but they never did, and when I woke hours later they were gone. Two hours earlier I had awakened in our hotel room and taken a head to toe shower using some kind of strong medicine that I had been cautione...

PreLenten Retreat Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a  season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith. I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on G...

It’s, brief, to some extent about death this morning because at 6:46 last night diocesan clergy had an email from our bishop telling us the Reverend Norman Bray died of a massive heart attack while working in his office, “we believe around 4:00 pm.” The time uncertainty tells me Norman died after staff left the office for the day and was found there when someone went to check on him. It also tells me that we were informed within, perhaps minutes of the bishop finding out. In fact, the rattled nature of the bishop's email tells me that for sure. Norman was rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Marianna, Florida. The bishop said the funeral will be in Marianna, perhaps Friday. If it’s not time to wax maudlin, it’s time to pause. Maybe think. Three o’clock in the morning is good for a moment of silence and to enjoy being alive, as in “Hey! I showed up again today: thank you, God!” And to appreciate being inside and warm when the red line on the back porch thermometer sits at 32...

Andrew and the Ringwraiths Some are real, some less so. Some favorite scenes, that is. Life scenes and not life. The pursued hobbits arrive on a rainy night, dark and stormy. To their banging, the gatekeeper opens the latch hole, peers out, swings the gate wide and they enter in the driving rain. The town has a frightening feel, medieval, scary, people darting about huddled against the cold rain. Frodo and company make their way to the pub, not knowing the Black Riders, Ringwraiths who are neither living nor dead, are not far behind. Gothic and terrifying, the arrival in Bree is my favorite scene in the entire series.  But it’s the invention of the scriptwriters, not the work of Tolkien whose arrival scene in Bree is very different: not raining, an evening walk in the town. Which is real and which is less so? I’ve watched the movie scene many times and prefer it to the book, is it life or not life? In the red Gospel book on our Altar, the gospel for last Sunday, J...

Apology to a Word This is an apology. Not an apologetic  that is a reasoned defense of a view over against an opposing view, but an apology. I have a bad thing with words and with rambling overflowing with far too many words, as my correspondents find when we exchange communications. It seems to be getting worse as more and more I observe myself becoming a scratchy old man. This apology is about one of my slogan words, the word “certitude.” I have contemned certitude, which I have erroneously fenced for my use to mean something sinfully beyond the sure and certain confidence that Hebrews 11:1 calls “faith.” In lighting on “certitude” I was wanting a word to convey the sense of stubborn certainty that one is right and others are wrong to such an extent that one would require others to live by one’s certainties, in social matters, matters of religion, politics. I’ve used “certitude” to mean negatively a certainty that is set in in concrete.  It isn’t. I’m rethinking my...

Monday Whatever, Whenever, Wherever One of the colorful local joys is "Coming Home," Sheila Leto’s column in the PCNH every Sunday morning. It’s always especially good because Sheila and I are the same age (well, she’s my brother Walt’s age) and we remember all the same things. We both grew up in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church with our beloved Father Tom Byrne, the only real Father Tom who ever lived, and like me, Sheila’s husband John Scott is a retired Episcopal priest. Her memories of St. Andrews are better than mine because, although I live here now and grew up around my father’s fishhouse in St. Andrews, and she and John live right across W. Beach Drive down on the Bay, she grew up right here, across 9th Street from this house that my grandparents built here a hundred years ago; while I grew up on Massalina Drive in the Cove. So our memories are a little different. I like hers better because in those days St. Andrews to me was a magical place of bare feet and rough...

John 1:29-42 NRSV (mod) 29 The next day he (John the Baptist) saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” 35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Je...

Unapologetically long. Unapologetically American. DOWHATYOULOVELOVEWHATYOUDO That’s uncial early New Testament style ALLCAPSNOSPACES Friday morning I worked in the front yard pulling up dead plants instead of easily cutting them, because Linda got ugly about my brand new heavy-duty string trimmer that does a great job but weighs 25 pounds and I nearly collapsed into the ER the first time I used it. Problem was not the marvelous machine, it was that I used it a couple hours instead of fifteen minutes at a time. Anyone who loves machinery as I do knows that when you have a wonderful new machine you run it until you drop, and that’s what happened. So now I’m forbidden ever to use it again at all. I’m waiting for Linda to go to BlueLake or to Tallahassee to babysit for a week. The best trimmer on Lowe’s shelves, it’s so heavy that even the yard crew told Linda, “No, ma’m, we had one of those and it was too heavy for us, we got rid of it.” Sissies. I can do it. This gets w...