INCOMING Born into not only the wrong age, but the wrong world, the wrong universe. It hits me. I should have lived in my grandfathers’ time or a little earlier. In the fifty years between Wars where I could happily have missed airplanes and just traveled by train or steamship, yet would have enjoyed the start of the Automobile Age. I’d have had a car, what would I have driven? Maybe a White Steamer, eh? What brings this on? All the news that’s fit to print, and some that ain’t. The print version of NYT comes here, I don’t read it, the print’s too dandelion tiny, I read the online edition. Linda reads it and works the crossword puzzle. Sunday she shared with me the “Engagements” section of pages and pages and pages. Jiminy Christmas. I’m outta here. Apple as a major sponsor of SF Pride, okay, I’m cool with it, WTH, I’m all for, seriously, have at it. But the headlines. ISIS changes name, declares caliphate, demands allegiance worldwide, sets goal for world domination in f...

Sermon in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on Sunday, June 29, 2014. Preaching text: Genesis 22:1-14, The Command to Sacrifice Isaac. The Rev. Tom Weller The Lamb. I shall speak of the Lamb. The Lamb of God. You may be seated. To every Hebrew scholar, our Bible story this morning is the picture of unspeakable shame: Abraham, by order of God himself, on the way to Moriah with his beloved son Isaac, child of laughter, long awaited son of promise, to slay the child and sacrifice him on a flaming altar as an ascending offering to God.  For all the dozens or hundreds of times I have heard and read the story at Genesis 22, I cannot handle it. It stirs my horror and grief as no other story ever has or ever could. A child. A little boy. A man’s beloved son. I cannot bear it. Abraham: is faith so blind, Abraham? And, Abraham, are you sure it was God? Surely not, Abraham: looking at the same story in The Holy Quran, Islamic scholars say God would never deman...

Engaging my wedding day memories this early morning is like opening a photo album to find a hodgepodge of pictures not neatly arranged but all in the front of the book needing to be sorted through and displayed orderly. These pictures have been here 57 years today, our wedding was June 29, 1957. My mind hasn’t done as good a job with them as a professional photographer would do.  It is a sunny afternoon. Already dressed in my new blue suit, a college graduation present from my parents, I stand in the front yard of the house where I grew up on Massalina Drive contemplating the choice I have made for my life. My grandparents arrive from Pensacola. Mamie and Walter Gentry and two cousins. My mental picture is of his car slowly rounding the curve and turning into our driveway as my cousin Bill waves to me. As always, the car is a Chrysler, a new 1957 Imperial Crown sedan, medium dark green with a white top.  Comes to mind, it is a nice car that I have driven, but not...

Red Right Returning Want a lift? What’s the worst thing one can do to oneself? Guarantee: to feel down, discouraged and depressed with life and creation, read an online newspaper first thing of a morning. Taliban mounts major offensive in Afghanistan. ISIS advances in Iraq. Shia and Sunni mutual massacres. Border patrol checkpoint 25 miles inside the border in Arizona town harasses citizens’ daily movements around town, creating police state, well do you want to be tough on illegal immigration, or don’t you, make up your mind. Continued exposure of GM internal culture of self-serving incompetence destroys confidence in my lifelong favorite car company, why promote a lifelong insider to Top Gunness? Sgt Bergdahl who walked away from problem unit in Afghanistan, to face questioning and possible charges: AWOL or desertion? A dancer, dreamer and poet never a soldier, the boy was a misfit: discharge him and send him packing for Chrissake, want to charge somebody, charge whoever enlist...

99. He said: "I will go to my Lord! He will surely guide me! 100. "O my Lord! Grant me a righteous (son)!" 101. So We gave him the good news of a forbearing son. 102. Then, when (the son) reached (the age of) (serious) work with him, he said: "O my son! I have seen in a vision that I offer thee in sacrifice: now see what is thy view!" (The son) said: "O my father! Do as thou art commanded: thou will find me, if Allah so wills, one of the steadfast!" 103. So when they had both submitted (to Allah), and he had laid him prostrate on his forehead (for sacrifice), 104. We called out to him "O Abraham! ... 105. "Thou hast already fulfilled the vision!" - thus indeed do We reward those who do right.  106. For this was a clear trial- 107. And We ransomed him with a momentous sacrifice: 108. And We left for him among generations (to come) in later times: 109. "Peace and salutation to Abraham!" 110. Thus indeed do We reward those who ...

For going ahead to the next round, the World Cup group of death discussion this morning makes even less sense than Australian Rules football, which 30-odd years ago I watched endless evenings on television. My Oz associates seemed to take satisfaction in my never, ever “getting it.” So with World Cup soccer.  As for Suarez, whom along with the rest of the world I watched bite another child and was astonished not to immediately see a red card, I am reminded of two key rules in our HNES kindergarten classes: no biting, and don’t throw sand. How can Liverpool abide the boy? After the second incident you send him to the office and call his mom to come get him. If he's to continue playing, he needs to go to the dentist and have all his teeth extracted. Is there a rule against gumming your opponent? How about sucking your thumb and pouting? Thinking to dodge machine gun fire from the sprinkler nests, instead of walking down the front steps, I went out the back door and walk...

Earthling: No Veronica It’s always one of us , isn’t it, it’s never them , it’s always us . “12 Year Old Takes School Bus For Joy Ride” reads the PCNH front page headline this morning. How do we know HE was 12, well, they caught HIM, didn’t they. It never even occurs to us that maybe it was SHE at least this one time. But no, it’s always us : HE was out bike riding before dawn, HE came upon the bus, the key was in the ignition, so zoom. I could drive at twelve too, my father promised to teach me to drive, and the Sunday after my twelfth birthday, the family went out into the woods at the far west end of Bay County, and I drove. These days, I prefer that Linda drive. With no idea how it is now, and couldn’t care less, I remember that when I arrived at the University of Florida in September 1953, the student body was ten thousand, a  real man’s school said to be ten to one males, and I believe it although I never actually counted us, but judging by my classes, that was true...

Rant: Let the Reader be Anathema All the world holds its breath in wait for the wisdom and word of the grand vizier. On Iraq et al. +Time is no political blog but anyone with any sense has political opinions. Mine are studiously not party-oriented and I deeply resent being pigeonholed as red or blue, and most especially as lib or con. Once at church coffee hour someone said, “I understand you are somewhat left of center.” With a bristle that now keeps me, with narrowed eyes, thin lips and sharp tongue when crossed, steering clear of polite chit-chat that might go off rancidly political, I retorted more sharply than politic for a clergyman, “Oh, really? On what subject?” But politics is/are about polis, an assembly of citizens, which are people, and any person with any sense has views. I find that mine are different to most. With dismay. Not at self; at the wrong views of others. Which is why I refrain. Politically right of Genghis Khan on some topics, left of the ACLU on ...

Probably nuts, but I like clicking YouTube and watching television news station coverage of soldiers surprising their children by coming home early from wars. Daughters, and sons, suddenly looking up and seeing their father walking into the classroom, jumping up and running, running, running, leaping into his arms to hold and never let go. Or onto the ball field. Or into a graduation ceremony. Maybe I like those stories because it happened with me several times in my Navy life and later, and it brings it all back. That it’s there to bring back is what makes me human. Sermons, or homilies -- what I did yesterday was a homily not a sermon and they are not the same even though some Episcopal clergy think they are being sophisticated or more “catholic” by using the term “homily” regardless -- can have many objectives. One such that I enjoy now and then is helping folks in the congregation immerse personally in a Bible story, either “being there” inside the story’s moment, or reliving...

Crackpot Topics swirling in mind, all but One of them as a crank. The One  on which I am fully qualified to speak is that this morning we return to the part of our Revised Common Lectionary, so-called “Track One” in which our First Reading, the lesson from the Old Testament, is a Bible story in its own right and does not have the OT reading’s customary link to the Gospel reading for the day. I like this new feature of the RCL, because I enjoy hearing again Bible stories that I remember from Sunday school of my childhood. This morning we shall read the story of Ishmael and his mother Hagar being cast out of the family at the insistence of Abraham’s wife Sarah. Most of our congregation will be away, enjoying our annual parish adventure Shell Island Sunday, billed interestingly as “Father, Son and Holy Coast.” While they are baptizing and feasting, the few of us, the last surviving remnant of the one true church, will have our usual gatherings at eight o’clock and ten-thirt...

Out of Tune Out of Touch Out of  Phase Now about a quarter, the moon is still high enough in the eastern sky to lighten the concrete steps for my predawn stroll down to get the newspaper. Moonlight, along with the sound, helps me avoid the sweeping stream of the sprinkler. By next week we’ll have dark and I’ll have to make my way more carefully.  There’s also the threat, new to me, maybe it wasn’t new to Pop and Alfred, about bears: of late, more than one in the neighborhood. Speculation was they swam across the Bay from Tyndall just opposite. Just opposite is Shell Island, but slightly to the east is TAFB. If the bears are overpopulated there, my friends along the BCR shore are even closer, have they had bears in The Cove? Are there enough bears for an open season? Are the animals big enough for bear rugs, or just the size to make Halloween costumes for kiddiewinks? IDK. ARA, arise and smite. Two or three bears within a block or so of my house gets my attention, s...

If my favorite breakfast is six large oysters broiled on toast x 2, second (leftover fried mullet is probably third) and not far behind the oysters, is liver pate' on toasted strips of whole wheat bread.  This started seventy years ago when my mother would buy me liverwurst for sandwiches, made early on with butter, in later years with Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Slices of liverwurst, tubes of liverwurst labeled “Braunschweiger,” or fried chicken livers smushed with mayo or butter. Not heart healthy, and Linda, who never liked it in the first place, put the kabosh on all of it years ago, then rather uglily with my onset of heart disease symptoms, etc. late 2010.  It’s still a first love, rarely indulged unless Linda was at Blue Lake or somesuchplace. Charlie Lahan’s Carousel at PCB had a tasty pate' that I used to buy when serving at St. Thomas Church, Laguna Beach 2004-2009, then later when shopping for wine: it must not have been a big seller, because the last time we w...

You couldn’t even laugh later with your buddies, if you had any you could trust, which you don’t. Didn’t. News reports of Saddam Hussein’s meetings always showed his top generals clutching notebooks, standing when the great leader entered the room, paying close attention, and earnestly jotting down his words. Once when Saddam’s two brutal sons were at the meeting, a son noticed a general listening too closely and not writing. “Take notes,” ordered the son, and the general started writing furiously.  Just so now under the ugly fat boy with the bad haircut. Generals walking around with Junior, never without the little notebook, jotting down his morsels of brilliance. Most ludicrous, at least to me as a naval officer, the report this week of the puffed up toad proudly inspecting his imposing submarine force, 1950s Romeo class diesel electric Unterseeboot.  With the admirals paying close attention and writing in their notebooks as the great one solemnly oozes wisdom ...