Midweek Bible study resumes today, after two sessions recess for Holy Week busyness and Easter Week recovery. Seeing that we have wonderful Scripture for this coming Third Sunday of Easter, especially beautiful in the King James Version, I am thinking to read all four selections as we munch on the scrumptious lunch Linda is preparing for us, perhaps explore each reading a bit, and then focus on one. Maybe two. The one might be the Gospel reading, Luke’s post-resurrection story of two disciples encountering Jesus on the road to Emmaus. There seem to be two sorts of post-resurrection appearances, one in which Jesus appears bodily and you can see the nail marks in his hands and touch the mark of the spear in his side, and maybe watch him eat a piece of fish; the other in which he seems to appear out of nowhere and as quickly vanish, perhaps a luminescent presence. We are thinking that the Emmaus Road appearance may be the former, until he vanishes out of their sight. Why didn’t they rec...

Seldom but sometimes I come downstairs with a thought to blog. Sometimes, as now, I open the MacBook and start typing, wondering if what generates “publish” will expose the same IQ as the breeze that blew into my right ear and out my left ear as I walked down the driveway to get Linda’s newspaper. The paper wasn’t there, so I must look again shortly. Temperature: 76F, 96% and a delightfully stiff, wet, cool breeze coming in off the Bay notwithstanding that Weather 32401 shows Wind 2 mph. The Wind here isn’t 2 at the moment, it's at least 10+. Anu Garg quotes Falstaff, “... the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man.” Yep, there I go, + Garg’s word this a.m. is “gird,” as in gird up your loins. Though I knew men of the Old Testament would gird up their loins, I didn’t get it until September 1949, my first time in the gymnasium dressing room as a freshman at Bay High. White T-shirt, tennis shoes and white socks, gird up the loins, red gym shorts, and go forth. And in t...

Uniform of the Day: Camo In the dark very early every morning, I walk out back, down the ramp I had built for my mother not long before she died, onto the concrete driveway to get Linda's newspaper. Eyes sweep the shadows cast by the streetlamp shining through trees and palm branches, looking for the wrapped paper, which is hiding, never easy to see. A slight breeze moves the shadows, making it even more elusive, camouflaged within the shadows that cover, hiding what's really there whether words are printed in black and white or unspoken in heart and mind. Always a good lesson in the magic and art of camouflage, the paper often lies invisible right at my feet. It's all there if you look for it. I spot it, pick it up, walk out to the middle of the street. Easter Week, in the morning’s eastern sky was a bright crescent moon, and to the right of it the planet Venus as big, bright and clear as I, once an amateur astronomer, have ever seen it. The eyes are not that pow...

Moon, Venus, ... Sunset has no corner on the heart, blackest darkness before Dawn is equally beguiling for one who lives by the sea where sky and flashing lights of navigation buoys team up to evoke Melancholy Mary Maudlin. Truth, I want to blog about other and have done, a wandering, elusive, beyond eccentric, seemingly cryptic post of a madman. One says too much trying to say little enough to stay in the shadows with the hiding newspaper, though conveying as insane. Only two get it: self and a fellow ancient musing about life, death and all that lay on the way.  See? MLP. So? Scan VOA. MH370: at the bottom of the sea or undercover being outfitted as a weapon? Russia v. Ukraine sparks WWIII? one thinks how absurd until recalling that a royal assassination ignited WWI, we don’t need much excuse to hate and kill each other. Class clown murders girl who declined prom date. Astronauts warn of meteorite danger from outer space, is someone beside ourselves trying to ...

Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, what shall we do in Adult Sunday School? My goof, one among many as ever, all of which I always blame on being 78 (wait until you get there, you will find that it's the real and perfect reason, not to say excuse), is that I failed to communicate and coordinate with my fellow class leaders so that we are all on the same page for the Sunday School hour. But I think this is the perfect moment to have a look at what Scripture tells us happened on Easter Day and just after. We have four accounts of that, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John -- and the first couple of chapters of Acts from which we shall be reading the next three Sunday mornings. We don’t have time to read everyone’s account, everyone remembers it slightly differently; so let’s stick with Luke’s account, seeing that as well as the Gospel according to Luke, he also wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Our Sunday School plan for this morning, then, will be to read Luke chapter 24,...

Time for a Haircut 69F and 97% says Weather 32401 at my sitting down for coffee moment, 3:38 digital time. Upstairs the porch door by my side of the bed is wide open, downstairs the doors between the front and the back of the house are open, and now the kitchen door is open to the downstairs back screen porch where I am; but Wind is 0 mph, not the slightest stirring, meaning no cross-breeze through the house. Are we close to turning on the air conditioning? I was hoping we’d have more lovely springtime to work outside. The neighbors’ a/c compressor is running, but the only sound here is right behind me, the noisy motor of the well pump bringing water up from deep down to fill the tank, thence out to the sprinkler system, which just began its cycle with the front yard. What's down there, is that the Florida aquifer? Darned if I know. For comfort, we have overhead fans running in the family room, but with no breeze and 97% humidity the alternative to running the a/c wil...

“You know those lonely nights and weekends when you're left to your own devices and forced to entertain yourself? Maybe you ponder the meaning of life, maybe you tackle a creative project or maybe you -- wait, let's face it: You probably turn on Netflix. Well your dog faces the same lonely existential crisis and his solution is, naturally, solo fetch.” (from HuffPost 2014/04.23) Alone and lonely are not the same, at least, not yet, though one of these days only one of us will come home from the hospital. But “existential crisis,” dogs too? So, how to speak from there at two o’clock in the morning without saying too much? Is this itchy spot on my left wrist a mosquito bite so early in the season, or is it a flea bite from yesterday out working in the yard? What woke me up so early this day? Well, the usual plus a glass of icy cold chardonnay on the back porch before supper of watermelon and three grapes, a composite that would rouse anyone; so relatively speaking, it isn’t...

Ignorant Medics or  Did They Forget the Double Privative Prefix? Aging, one (that’s me) pays more attention to these things, doesn’t one. Cognitive impairment, for example, which is in the news this morning. MCI, the “m” is for mild , which is the early stage that starts the downhill slide into mental oblivion: men are 1.6 times more likely to have it than women. No fair, we are supposed to be equal.  It worsens. There are two kinds of MCI, amnestic MCI and non-amnestic MCI. But to digress, my slight knowledge and remembrance of Greek is starting to annoy. What comes to mind is a feature of our Eucharistic prayer, the anamnesis , which means “not forgetting” or literally, “not having amnesis” or more literally, “not not remembering.” In Prayer B we say “We remember his death, We proclaim his resurrection, We await his coming in glory,” where the “We remember his death” is the anamesis , our proclamation that we don’t forget what happened on Good Friday, his sacri...

The mind does funny things, doesn’t it. Seizes on a memory, wanders with it, goes somewhere long past. This one often starts when I swing out of bed, place my feet on the floor, and stare out into the darkness. What, twenty-five years ago? a parishioner who was a friend at the time came to me almost in despair to moan that he was waking up at four o’clock in the morning and could not get back to sleep. It had been happening for weeks now, becoming a habit Gordon could not shake. He did not appreciate my response, that my body clock had started rousing me by four a.m. years ago, that I had decided to enjoy it as a pleasant time for solitude, thinking, prayer, reading, watching the day open. I suggested that Gordon change his attitude: if he could not break the early waking habit, decide to enjoy it instead of letting it make him angry, upset, unhappy. It had worked for me, still does, but Gordon did not like my idea at all.   Five years or so earlier, Gordon had been the v...

Tempest in a Teapot Hatred is not limited to Muslim Sunni v. Shia or Irish Green v. Orange, or Christian Left v. XNRT. I’ll be gardenia to heliotrope if we don’t have it right here among our ownselves, of all the alphabet sweetpeas. !!!Three points for asininity, four for alkalinity!!!! An NYT article last Saturday, April 19, 2014, page A10, “Two Ministers Forge Friendship Across a Church Divide” reports from Fairfax, Virginia that bishop Shannon Johnston (Episcopal Church in the USA) and the Rev. Tory Baucum of Truro Church in Fairfax (Anglican Church of North America) forged a personal friendship out of enmity between the two factions, ECUSA and ACNA after years of obscenely costly litigation over church property. Litigation ended with courts awarding the Episcopal Church the property (Truro) and then winning bishop Johnston turning around and leasing it to the losing ACNA parish rent free for maintaining it. A sensible brotherly/sisterly settlement in which the chief clerics on ...

Banal, whether to begin unremarkably with So or with Well or neither: that is the question. Problem solved . So, that was interesting. Three essays of sorts to start Tuesday before driving over to Linda Ave behind Cove School near the bike rack where we parked our bikes under the scrub oaks 70 years ago, and walk with Robert. Walk about an hour, one direction or other and back, remember who lived where, have breakfast. First was an NYT article reporting life in Russian Crimea is hectic these days, chaotic . None of the social systems is working. Banking, government, courts, businesses. Will it be that way in Texas when they revert to Lone Star or return to Mexico? Do the rest of us get to vote in their referendum? Putin will vow to protect the Texans from the Americans, will he be their first president, or governor?   The delanceyplace.com selection is about the origins of agriculture. We began thousands of years ago as hunter-gatherers, but agriculture evolved even tho...

Wandering on the Maui tarmac and picked up by security, a 16 year old boy is questioned by the FBI. He had climbed down from the wheel well of a jetliner from California, surviving a five hour flight at 38,000 feet. One source says the temperature there is 50 degrees below zero F, another says 75 below. Some will praise God that the boy is alive and unharmed. Some will praise God for the survival of several high school children on a South Korean ferry that capsized drowning hundreds of other children, what about them ? Some who prayed for William will nevertheless pray without ceasing for an eight year old boy with a malignant brain tumor. In anguish, some will contemplate God, and wonder.  In anguish, some will contemplate God, and wonder. Monday in Easter Week Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that we who celebrate with awe the Paschal feast may be found worthy to attain to everlasting joys; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,...

The toughest week of all on clergy (far more on the senior pastor/rector than on retired priest associates like me, but nevertheless), Holy Week is over for another year.  Easter Week, which begins now, is customarily a week for short hours and days off for clergy and for church staffs. Enjoy your Easter morning and eating candy and chocolate eggs from the basket the Easter bunny brought. Come to church, 8:00 or 10:30, but we have no Sunday School class today, Easter Day . There is brunch between services though, so come enjoy. Linda is bringing an egg and ham casserole that looks beyond scrumptious. Far my part, a friend sent me a piece about a historic Rolls Royce, which set the Easter bunny to cackling and laying colored eggs in my mind for several days while I participated in Holy Week agony; but pop here it bursts to the surface this morning like a breaching whale. Rolls Royce had an American plant and built cars in Springfield, Massachusetts from 1920 to 193...