The Last Stop Is Not the End of the Line Why does one arise so blasted early, why does the mind in the wee hours seize the moment to obsess? And that on matters not even the deranged intellect can resolve, much less in this darkness when only Tōshō is open. Why? Ah, this morning’s delanceyplace.com extract is from Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America . America, where mental restlessness is pandemic. Except in the Bible Belt, where Ussher reigns and the mind is checked at the door. This coffee is perfect for the sunrise watch: Trader Joe’s 100% Kona, rich and smooth, whole beans ground in my Coffeemaker Extraordinaire, but what’s that hot thing discomforting my left kidney? Ah: laptop recharger transformer box dissipating heat: science. Sony +32.0, Toyota down 25 and I can buy or sell from this green sofa if so moved, General Washington would be incredulous. He lived as the Enlightenment set and the Second Great Awakening dawned mixing, Menand ...

Eagles in Heaven  Always in life there’s something else and new to learn, isn’t there. Anu’s wonderful word this morning is luftmensch, which pretty much suits me perfectly at times. Most times. Some airhead priest instead of a realtor or new car dealer as I contemplated my university years: there was no Chrysler-Plymouth dealer here and it was going to be me, Thanks a lot, Buzz.  There was “nothing but sand” across Hathaway Bridge as my father often said, and I thought to sell it. Instead, a luftmensch, literally an air man selling -- what? A notion of eternity. Ride that across the heavens with me in the yellow Cadillac of my dreams. Let’s hope there’s plenty of room up there, my friends may be zooming back and forth in F-15 fighter jets and Navy Tomcats. I’ll be 17, they can be whatever age they choose, minimum 21 for hitting the O Club. Even St. Peter has rules. Raining so hard the walk is cancelled, first time in months. That’s not the Eagle I mean...

It’s worse than it wasn’t a good Saturday . Buddy Boy, it was a bad Saturday. What happened? South Carolina. Michigan. SCAR I’m stunned. STUNNED . MGoBlue, not stunned just embarrassed yet one more time again, the profane texting acronym starts out WT.. and ends with a question mark. Even the team I most love to hate disappointed me by, as Megan said on FB during the game, apparently their defense didn’t make it to Raleigh. “No. 1 Florida State rallies to beat North Carolina State” are you kidding me? I like a Florida team to be number one, I do not like it to be FSU, but it is -- if I were still a sailor instead of some preacher I could salt it better -- 21-24 at the half? Are you kidding me? There's a profane texting acronym for that too. FSU -- RALLIES -- to win? Are you kidding me? Since when does No. 1 “ rally ” to win a football game? Somebody better rethink their vote on this ranking. Maybe Thanksgiving Weekend 2014 isn’t looking so hopeless after all. Nah, I already orde...

Anyone who has reached this age and stage of life has confronted exasperation and dealt with frustrating situations and issues of uncertainty; not least matters of personal health and wealth, wellbeing of loved ones, death and taxes. This rises to the surface this morning as in the wilderness with Moses the Israelites find that Moses and God have encamped them in a place where there is no water.  Moses, remember, grew up in the palace as a prince of Egypt. Adopted as an infant he was given an Egyptian name, accustomed to being served and waited on, he knows little or nothing about roughing it. He even speaks Yiddish with an Egyptian accent. Yes, he tended the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, but even that the Lord rescued him from by appearing in the Burning Bush and tasking him to the role of leadership because he probably looked like a movie star. Well, he did look like a movie star, didn't he.  Moses never sewed on a button, carried a bucket of water from the wel...

Second Post for Today Good second morning, friends is a good way to continue today! Folks who were at church Wednesday evening heard that Linda and I have finally conceded, after two or three years of wrenching back and forth about it, that this wonderful old house and property have just become too much for two octogenarians (no, Linda declines that high honor) in thirteen rooms and 4 1/2 baths, furnished, finished, and decorated with our art and things from two and three family generations! Large yard with cedar trees, fig trees, lemon trees, prolific grapefruit trees, flowering plants including Florida classic azaleas, camellias and gardenias. MLP and the Bay. Not to mention the ubiquitous palm trees. For those blessed with long life, the hour cometh and now is to sit back with a glass of wine and muse on how wonderful it has all been.  We’ve listed the place with Charlie Commander. A dear friend is going to let us try out her place at the beach to see if we enjoy condo...

St. Andrews Bay Times St. Andrews, Florida, June 22, 1916 Delightful Gulf Party Monday evening a party of young people with large baskets well filled boarded a launch and sped across the bay to the Gulf where several hours were spent very pleasantly bathing, emptying those baskets and otherwise enjoying themselves only as young people can. Those constituting the party were Misses Gaynor, Eva and Laura Thompson, Dorothy and Grace Ware, Gladys Wilcox, Lydia and Ruth Smith, Elsie Jordan and Mrs. C. . Gideon, accompanied by "Rosy" Nelson, Earl Thompson, "Rube" Williams, George and Harley Combs, A. R. Folks, F. A. Reynolds, Alfred Weller and a Mr. Treadway. They returned to St. Andrews in the wee small hours of the night, feeling that time had passed only too soon. -------------------- Alfred was 16 years old at the time. My father always said lovingly that Alfred was the apple of Mom and Pop's eye.  other news in the same edition of the T...

St. Charles 65F and 84% at four o’clock predawn. The gentlest waft of air seems to be coming off the Bay down toward the west behind me, not from the south in front of me as usual. These azaleas are months past blooming, I need to trim the tops; when I sit here I want nothing between me and the Bay. And camellias can be demanding, whatever will mama’s White Empress do? And my favorite, the extraordinarily bright red single with yellow stamens: mama disliked it because its blossoms were supposed to be thick and full when she planted it fifty years ago, but it disappointed her and she never let up on it. Winter blooming, that unloved camellia is my Christmas tree that Charlie Brown brought home because he felt sorry for it. Who is ugly most needs someone to sing You Are So Beautiful To Me. The boy’s a saint, you know, for all his naive innocence, Charlie Brown is the good guy. Pensive, melancholy, hopelessly in love with the little red-haired girl, sitting on the end of the ...

Gentle breeze out here on the downstairs front porch, 67F and 90%, my kind of early fall Florida Gulf Coast morning. And there’s that green channel light winking at me from across the Bay. The weather page reports Wind 0 mph but the weather man isn’t sitting here on my porch with me. It would be nice if this fall weather holds on. What I’m thinking about yet one more time again though, doubtless like everyone else I know, including my noble readers this morning, is Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). A clergyman, son and grandson of clergymen, prominent German bible scholar and theologian, his name was Friedrich Daniel Ernst but I don’t know what his mama called him. My mama called me Bubba and I am one, but F.D.E. was no Bubba. Always trying to salvage something that made sense in religion, in 1799 he published On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers trying to reconcile the Enlightenment with Protestant Christianity, some of which we read in seminary. He’s not the best ...

Panama City Pilot, Thursday, January 10, 1929 New Chevrolet Six Finds Large Demand The beautiful new six-cylinder Chevrolet, placed on display here for the first time on December 29 and viewed by more than 500 admiring visitors the opening day, has taken this section by storm, officials of the Bennett Chevrolet Company asserted yesterday. In proof of their assertion, they point to five deliveries -- all that they had been able to obtain up to Tuesday, together with twenty-five positive orders for delivery as quickly as possible, and more orders coming in every day. Those who are already enjoying possession of the new Chevrolet six, together with the model purchased, are Mr. Morris Chambliss of Millville, a coach; Mr. B. B. Williams, Panama City, a coach; Mr. Gover Rodgers, Panama City, a coach; Mr. J. E. McQuagge, Panama City, coach, and Mr. O. G. Griffin, Wewahitchka, a 1 1/2 ton truck. In the new models, everything that ever gave occasion for criticism in Chevrolet...

a lunchbox full of gears Fissiparous? Okay, Anu Garg, I’m off my rocker just enough to appreciate the unlimited notion of using word parts to create new words as needed. If Johnny can build himself a Cadillac “One Piece At A Time” http://www.metrolyrics.com/one-piece-at-a-time-lyrics-johnny-cash.html by sneaking out a part a day over 24 years, there’s no reason anyone has to be trapped in a dictionary. Webster can stuff it. One of my own words, “certitudinous” has often proved useful over the years and is at least as legitimate as the splendiferous new, unique and exclusive names that parents have been creating to damn their children to lives of crime. I don’t see working fissiparous into a sermon but might casually drop it into a blog post one early morning. “U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms” reads today’s NYT headline. Seems that Peter Arnett was right, we’ll have to destroy the world in order to save it. What will it look like when we’re done? Cormac McCarthy ...

Away at a convention of USAF fighter pilots, Mike will not be with us in Sunday School this morning, it’ll be just me at the end table plus whoever wants to sit up there or down there with me and kibitz.  The Episcopal Church observes the seasons of the church year, and we are in the Season after Pentecost, that long green season that stretches from Pentecost to Advent. In worship we read from a prescribed lectionary that runs in a three-year cycle. Because of our wonderful summer-into-fall of reading old Bible stories from the Old Testament during this Lectionary Year A, we’ve been talking about the Old Testament in Sunday School, and have had a couple of fascinating sessions. This morning, though, I think we'll digress because our lectionary launches a four-Sunday series of reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. So I think we may have this one Sunday School session as an introduction to Philippians. The warmest and most loving of his extant letters, sometimes des...

Shame but No Apocalypse Shame, isn’t it, disgraceful that sports in America, especially football -- at least that’s the one I’ve cared most about or paid most attention to since MLB faded decades ago -- shame that football and sports don’t lead in morality instead of responding to morality. Jameis the Jewel won’t be playing at all today instead of penalized half a game. It isn’t just CFB. Yesterday the commissioner, whom we looked at but muted because enough already, made his excuses for himself and NFL. Was it money and winning all along, or wasn’t there a time when honor, honesty and integrity were the rules of the game. No, there never was such a time, it’s something we say in church and Boy Scouts that has no meaning for life as we live it. And far back as you can go, every generation decries the new immorality.  Yea, even God's ownself. Even unto Marcus Aurelius. Am I ashamed to be American? Hell no and I am and have been as normally inhuman as you lot, close but...

TGIF Strange this morning, at least it seems odd to me as a non weather person -- sitting up here in my bed with the blind open in the door so I can see out into the blackness, thought I glimpsed a quick flash of lightning. So I look at the iTitan weather display on my iPad to see what’s going on. Shows us and the entire northern Gulf of Mexico to the west of us from about Morgan City to, now as I watch, drifting into Apalachee Bay, covered in green, indicating rain, or rain clouds, with the entire -- I suppose it’s a system -- apparently moving eastward, such that we soon would be covered. However, and this is what caught my eye, right smack in the middle of it, south from Gulfport to Pensacola, is a band of yellow and orange clouds that seem to be fighting their way westward. Is it rotating? IDK, it seems to be more -- sliding -- sneaking -- the bottom sneaking east and the middle moving west and leaving its castoff part to the north of it drifting eastward and over us. WTH?...

Often as not, my daily blog post begins without prior thought as I start typing while sipping my first cup of coffee. Something occurs, evolves. Maybe after walking down the front concrete path for the PCNH and, looking out across my Bay, pausing to recall the flashing green light that, across his bay, cost Jay Gatsby his life because of a dream he so passionately believed in but, even as he died, never saw was not real, an illusion. ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω. His life and his dream were illusions. Was my dream real? I don’t know. It no longer matters. What matters is that I have no sermon for Sunday.  If there are possibilities in the OT reading, say a Bible story I learned as a child, I prefer to find a sermon in that instead of my old Episcopal habit of standing in the pulpit and beginning yet one more time again, “In our gospel for today ...”. Yesterday in fact I was reading the Exodus 16 story of God and Moses and the whining, complaining, grousing Israelites in the wildernes...

Me, Myself, and An expert is someone carrying a briefcase who arrives from out of town to tell you you’re wrong. No expert, I know not much about anything but a little about several things. Like everyone, my range of knowing is different from yours. Our knowing overlaps variously yet is not common, e.g., a St. Andrews Bay native, graduate of a theological seminary and the naval war college, yet expert in nothing, I’ve some knowing that others don’t. A bishop laid hands on, mashed me down, and ordained me to wear a goofy white collar that fools the naive into assuming I’m expert. Not so, yet when I wear the fool thing they call me “Father.” Who, me? Just as when I wore the coat with stripes and the hat with scrambled eggs they called me “Sir.” Don't call me Sir. It was only me. Our knowing is different. Our knowing and also our having been . Stirring the knowing and the having been , each is so different that no two match. Different knowing and being. If I offer a Sunda...

Across the Bridge At least for those of us who enjoy the predawn darkness, it is so easy to love a predawn thunderstorm. Now Dasher, now Dancer, it came rumbling noisily through, awakening me from the slight doze to which I’d returned after Father Nature’s quick traipse. In a Navy ship, a headcall, but in those days it didn’t strike during the wee hours. Lightning and thunder, on Donder and Blitzen, and the sound of rain on the upstairs porch roof just outside my door. I went out to appreciate it for a moment and check for the PCNH, not there yet, and to read the thermometer, just over 80F and gaspingly muggy. Back inside just as the storm, which had a chance to make itself proud but didn't, drifts on off toward Apalachicola.  The iTitan program on my iPad shows another string of yellow revolving toward me from just this side of Fort Walton Beach.  Stretching from Grand Isle to Ocala, this weather system covers this entire part of the Gulf of Mexico. It has its ba...