The cute little red envelope in the top margin of the MacBook screen has a 10 beside it, telling me ten emails are waiting to be opened. Soon as I click it, mail will be checked and another dozen will show up. But why should I?  Why should I? There'll be at least one Amazon ad, a couple of Zillow notifications. Somebody will be trying to entice me with a super deal on a new Honda. There will be bad news headlines from the New York Times and The Washington Post, plus another email from each with “Opinions” of intelligent folks but whose opinion I value less than my own. Anu will have a great new word for me to work casually into a sermon. There will be two or three news and opinion emails from CSM. Bleacher Report will have at least one, likely two different emails waiting for me. There will be a football headline. Yesterday afternoon as part of our Home Tweaking Project, I painted the front steps, which had not been painted in twenty-five or thirty, maybe forty years, and ...

Saints and Sinner Write your own All Saints sermon, he said, that’s your homework. It doesn’t have to be written down on paper, or typed. And you don’t have to preach it, he said. It’s memories of saints in your own life, people who have meant so much to you. And maybe you knew them personally, but not necessarily. Most Wednesday evenings at church he gives us homework. I try to take it to heart. So, keeping faith with the sound of the sea, surf crashing on the white sand fifteen stories down, and its fog, this has been the perfect if for me physically, emotionally and mentally wearing, draining, tiring October, nevertheless perfect. Some heat, some chill Florida Gulf Coast mornings, some fog, one big storm, lots of sunshine. This condo, a haven at the end of each exhausting day, incredibly welcoming, ineffably an escape, an oasis, like arriving at St. Peter’s Gate, what a gift and blessing for the two of us. But my saints, eh? Many live saints, there are hundreds of thous...

It matters not which font I select, when my post moves from Pages to the blog, Other seizes control, the font nazi. Seems like Other is in control of my life at the moment anyway. We are working on and at our house doing little thises and thats to help it show appealingly.  Of course, it appeals to me anyway and has since I first knew it. In my car mindset I can figure out when that was. The War was over and my father was home from the sea service, which puts it after 1945. The house was on the market and Mama and I went to look. W. Beach Drive was two car ruts through the lower part of the front yard, and we parked our 1942 Chevrolet down front under the cedar trees. We bought the 1948 Dodge in May 1948, so this makes the time 1946 or 1947 and me eleven or twelve. I wasn’t driving yet, my father took me for my first driving lesson the Sunday after my 12th birthday, so I must have been eleven when I fell in love with this old house. Mama told me that Mom and Pop had buil...

While it isn’t my habit to look for statements about myself or my way of life or the culture that I’m part of, it did occur to me this morning that something was told when the first thing I did upon waking was reach for my telephone. Not my eyeglasses, my telephone. In truth, the glasses are neither vital nor critical, if I were a caveman I’d be fine, because I only need and use them to read, and if I’m not reading they are most annoying, which is why I wear them on a string round my neck. Back to the topic, what if we woke up to no phone service, email or internet worldwide, all of it suddenly gone.  We’d get along. Actually, that’s where I grew up, isn’t it. We did have a phone, 702W, but it was hanging on the wall in the hall between the living room and dining room, and when it rang you could hear it because the windows were open and you ran in from outside to answer it. Born in 1872, my grandfather had no phone until, what? IDK, the nineteen-teens or twenties? I remember mam...

Who or What? When the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done ... a facet of God I like is that God, having God, having and knowing a god, a deity, and that one personal, is God being there, here, when I am here and need it to be not alone. When all is done, and the prayer is said, and it’s the wee darkest hour, and loved ones sleep, or grew up and away and moved on and are gone, and are far away, or even vanished beyond the veil if not from the heart, and one is not simply alone but lonely in darkness after the greater light has sunk into the sea, perhaps there is the One  knocking, Who will come in to me, if I open. Or is there just darkness and I am alone? Door slightly cracked open against the October night with its damp fog, admitting only the sound of the sea. It’s just me and hopefully Who or What I am willing to believe, choose, accept, speak to. That Whatever Who spoke...

The morning we left Cleveland to fly home to Panama City, I switched from CaringBridge to this +Time blog that Jeremy set up for me. Early every morning I peck out a post, Since October 2010, haven’t missed a single morning in four years. Only once did I later, the next day, delete a post, and a friend called me to task for that; so even if tempted I’ve not gone back and deleted again, because, better or worse, it was my legitimate thought of the moment.  +Time is just my thoughts, what I’m doing, what I’m thinking about, what’s on my mind or comes to mind as I sit looking at the computer screen. A friend said she takes my temperature by it. Mood, frame of mind, life in general, cars, or something about Panama City during my growing up years here, Bay County, St. Andrews Bay, college football, oysters, mullet, a Bible verse or church event, Navy years, my house, Alfred, something in the news or blowing in from the skies. An anger, in disgust or a delight. Maybe a social issue; b...

Rights Worth More Than Children Are high school boys unstable? Sure seems like it, in Washington State another quiet, good guy with a firearm gunning down fellow students then committing suicide. It is incontestable that we are an amazing society. If these were Muslim boys doing the shootings, the really big thinkers would be raging against Muslims. But these are boys with rights, so nothing can be done. We are an amazing society. A sickening study in rights versus responsibilities. School children were murdered again Friday, but nothing can be done, because we know our rights. With rights come responsibilities.  We just don’t get it.  TW

Something may be as soothing and peaceful as predawn darkness with surf washing lightly ashore: I don’t know what it would be. Memories perhaps, private and to each his own. On a foggy night, a bell in Narragansett Bay ringing vessels away from rocks as I drift off to sleep, and I am 33, miles and years from adventures yet to come. Adventures, lives and loves unknown and undreamed. Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be. Just as well we can’t know the future, isn’t it. Thinking of walking on the beach: how far can I walk and still make it back? There was a time and year when it was regularly six or eight miles, but now I’m nearly twice that forty, how did this happen, how did I get here, I must not have been paying attention. Life is a bus ride, isn't it. I must have been looking out the window. A bus ride, and I was dozing. Walking is best when distracted or trying to walk away from. What? Whatever was I thinking? It hasn’t been possible to walk away from life.  Life...

This morning I really have no message to convey or thoughts to muse on.  Linda and I had no idea until we arrived home from church last evening and Linda opened Facebook, that yesterday’s birthday observance for Beverly McDaniel at Holy Nativity Episcopal School was such a major happening, or we would have climbed down out of the attic and shed our grubbies to be there and help honor Beverly and the event. It was a big celebration of the star of our school. Disappointed in ourselves, we are sad to have missed it. Congratulations to Our Lady of HNES, and blessings upon you always! Our retirement relocation project is progressing. Probably, these things are never entirely satisfactory to the people having the experience, and this one is particularly exhausting for the two of us, but day by day we are getting our house in shape for realtors to show it to prospective buyers. The house dates from 1912 and is in good condition, but we are clearing rooms of our furniture, art and such...

Like A Sleepy Blue Ocean No human creation, not even this MacBook with the lighted keyboard, could match the magical wonder of the human mind, way it wanders and zips, leaps and jumps from place to place and time to time, memory to memory and recreates reality that was as though it still is. It only wants igniting, a trigger. Last evening the Gulf of Mexico was as calm as I have ever seen the sea, filling up my senses, calm, beautiful, flat and contrasting with the Pacific Ocean our Navy years in San Diego and me Down to the Sea in Ships. The California memory always moves through the morning I drove away from there, up into the hills and east, leaving my ship behind enroute to Columbus, Ohio via Phoenix and Scottsdale where Linda, Malinda and Joe already were. And Tass, whom Linda knew but I didn’t yet, incredible, unexpected, most beautifully astonishing news waiting for me to hear later that day. Who lighted up Columbus and my senses and life ever since. July 1971, ...

Bible Seminar this morning, faithfully comes round every Tuesday on schedule during the season. Our church has any number of small groups getting together regularly, and this along with Adult Sunday School is one of my favorites.  This morning, like the clutch going down while we shift into second gear, we will be reading and discussing 1st Thessalonians. When the clutch comes back up we will be back in gear to continue the Gospel according to Mark. But 1st Thess is Paul’s earliest extant writing, and not only that but is the oldest writing in the New Testament. Thomas may arguably be older, Q may be older, and a hypothetical passion gospel may be older, but Paul’s letter to the church at Thessalonica is our oldest canonical document. That alone makes it prime. But also the church gives us the reason and excuse to pause and interrupt our reading and study of the Gospel according to Mark by scheduling 1st Thessalonians as our Second Reading for the final weeks of our Season aft...

Those two ships anchored offshore are no more idle than I at the moment. We’ve been going into town to work all day on clearing our house and other regular doings of life, then, exhausted, return here afternoons or early evening. It has been and is incredible, compelling us to stop and enjoy. Better than roses, the salt air. Sound of the sea. You can see to the curve of the earth. Sunday evening the sea was lapping ashore. Calm, flat Gulf, not rough. Sounds the same now, soothing peace in nature. Earlier the water was clear, taking several days for clarity to recover from last week’s severe storm. Linda is fascinated with the stingrays in large schools skimming along. I am taken with ships lying idle and remembering how it was to be anchored offshore in view of land and no liberty call. No, you had to get the lingo right: sailors had liberty, officers had shore leave.  This was a hard week past. Exhausting. Last night it was relax and watch the sky. The two ships at an...

Got nothing to say about CFB this morning. For some odd reason I expected the Gators to do well against Mizzou. I figured anyone who went to the FSU game hoping to watch ND win was going to be disappointed. Michigan was off. Auburn off. I’m no Tide fan, but I still remember the SEC upstart and upstar Johnny Mouth upsetting Alabama a couple years ago, haven’t liked him or the Aggies since, and still don’t even though he's hopefully freezing his bee off these lake winters, but didn’t expect that level of shutout. In church, which I know more about, we have finished Paul to Philippians and this morning start First Thessalonians. Even for those who feel about Paul as I do about Johnny Manziel, this is a fascinating letter to read and discuss. So while I’m not preaching on it, I think we’ll read and discuss First Thessalonians in Adult Sunday School. Five short chapters, read the entirety and then discover what it’s about and what some scholars say. TW+

Underway, shift colors Seeing as it’s my blog and post, it’s none of your business whether it’s interesting or not, is it, it only need please me. But to be perfectly frank ‘n clear, it doesn’t even need to do that, I don’t need a blog, I have plenty to do without it, what with clearing out, getting ready to sell and move on with life and less, a seemingly unending undertaking. As Linda notes, we’re clearing through 99 years of my mother’s things, 90 years of her mother’s things, things each of us has each held onto for 157 years of individual lives and the accumulated detritus of 57 years of married life, not a collection but the acquisitions of a couple of hoarders.  When a house has a walk-in attic that’s bigger than any other room in the house, you never need trash anything, put it out in the attic, we may need it someday. Or the children may want it. There’s nothing wrong with keeping a string of Christmas tree lights that quit burning thirteen years ago, I may try to fi...

And all I ask For my next trick I’m thinking a world without politics and politicking and political campaigns. No television. Maybe a world with typewriters instead of people. Anglican Chant. What happens there, what is there, whatever or wherever it is that we go or do not go? If it is and we go, I pray it’s a dream. I hope it’s not real, because if it’s a dream it will be whatever I dream, whatever I want it to be, my blue heaven. If it’s real ain’t nobody gone want to be with this bubba; but if it’s a dream, that makes no matter, because it will be who and what I dream of. Relax: just because you’re in my dream doesn’t mean you have to have me in yours. You will be as I remember. As I dream. You won’t be smoking in my dream; a smoker on the next balcony drives me inside if not insane; I won’t dream him into hell, but if he appears in my dream he will have given it up, because there ain’t no way. He can smoke in his own dream if he makes it that far, which is doubtfu...

down to the sea and the sky Big mistake this morning, reading email, NewYorkTimes, several Jonathan Turley columns, scanning Zillow -- diverting the mind from positive constructive musing. Sliding door is slightly cracked, exactly one inch, to admit sounds of the angry surf, and yes, the sea is still more than annoyed this morning, irritated might be the word. Moody . Maybe it’s the hour, Sea hasn’t had her coffee yet. Flash of memory: Navy days I knew someone who was not to be messed with, nor spoken to until after the second cup, even “good morning” was taken as offense. Don’t smile, don’t even look at, avert eyes and zip it.  to the lonely sea and the sky Can’t see it yet, but yesterday the water was still a muddy mess from our terrific storm the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Sounds the same from far below, fierce, growling, angry. Solution: pour in a cuppa hot, black, strong? Who thinks the Sea has no moods hasn’t been down to her in ships. Even that day i...

Wednesday Cooler outside, surf no longer angry, but sullen, as though it didn’t win yesterday, it and the wind. Lightning, thunder and driving rain passed on, the sea is still here biding its time, waiting for the wind to return. It’s lover, the wind. Today. Walked. Breakfast. Stopped and visited friends on the way home, cool and quiet at their place, do they remember me? Do they remember? Are they? Where? How long, Lord? Questions without answers are as good as any. Still working in the house clearing out and giving away, Linda taking some few last things for auction. Select a paint for the back ramp, knowing that whoever lives here next may think getting old is for old folks and tear it out: they’ll learn before it’s over. Quick trip back out to the beach condo for my hearing aids because I have a four o’clock appointment to get them tuned up. Also, because it’s my pulpit Sunday it’s my turn tonight and I need to be able to hear. Beef and chicken enchiladas for supper at churc...

Noisy. And Bright. One good thing about me, I don’t mind being wrong. Yesterday I said the surf is not to listen to, that it just is. But a Navy salt knows better, and I thought better as I wrote but wrote anyway. The surf is like a lion. Or a bear, a dog. Well, a cat. Angry, it warns with its growl. Few things are more ominous than a growling cat --don’t pat, don’t touch, don’t reach out, don't say nice kitty -- except the surf. Only a fool doesn’t listen to the surf. A book read years ago, The Great Tide , remembers from the sea the thunderous sound of waves crashing closer and closer to old St. Joseph - - - were they crashing on the barrier peninsula, I don’t recall. No one could imagine what it was until too late. The memory of those who weren't there but heard the story that grew more and more fearsome in the telling is of a mountainous hurricane tide surging in and over and leaving in its withdrawal only rubble and death. Scattered bricks strewn where buildings had s...

This is an interesting experience, maybe unique for me. Sunset and after dark Sunday evening, sitting outside on this balcony not doing anything or watching, seeing anything, as there's naught to see. Just being. Well, there’s audio, hearing the surf, but the surf is not to listen to, is it, it just is , the old salt sea rolling ashore. So, being . Breeze constant and a bit cool on the legs, inside for pajama pants, back out into pitch black dark. Shrieks of children in the surf below, or they might be in the pool, or running on the beach.  Exhausted from Saturday's long hours clearing out a hot attic, scores of trips up and down the outside stairs, I had a very long Sunday afternoon nap, several hours and now may not be able to sleep. Or sleep a bit then awake at one or two o’clock, so what else is new, it’s life and I’m loving it, including or especially my odd hours. Mind wanders. Sunday morning church was extraordinary. Based on Paul to Philippians, a sermon about as...

Yes, You, Friend Extraordinarily tense game, and I saw not one smile from Saban, only grimace. The man takes his football real serious. SEC at its tightest. Don’t remember watching a game with so many fourth downs played instead of punted. Arkansas didn’t shame themselves either. They did have the whole red snapper at Capt Anderson’s. Better than ever as not lying in a butter bath this time. One third of it brought home for breakfast, along with Kristen’s baked potato skin, the best part. And two of her oysters. Our house has a spacious walk-in attic, which until yesterday was a cluttered mess, but fairly decent now. I do need to sort my tools into don’t keep and a few keeps that fit into the metal tote tray Joe made for me in high school, one of my treasures. Pliers, few screw drivers, couple of hammers. That folding allen wrench set. Drill? maybe. Life gets down to what you may need and shed what you definitely won’t, and I’m looking forward to not putting on thick gard...

What do we have this delightful Saturday morning, October 2014? Slight gentlest waft of breeze, 76F and 91%, hey, we’re Floridians, baby, it’s all good. The surf is rolling in, still dark at 5:34. Been out here an hour with one cup of coffee so far, a little pod of Linda’s creamer. Someone shouts on the beach far below and a dog responds yappingly. How good does life get? Well, it’ll get a little better if for no other reason than that the second cup of coffee will be black. This condo business is to find out how we feel about condo living, and so far it’s all good. Impression may be influenced by the lone and silence. Not to mention the view into oblivion. I’m looking at a Google Map. If I get in Jeremy’s kayak and start paddling straight south, I will cross the Gulf of Mexico about noon, pass between Cuba to my east and the Yucatan to the west, into the Caribbean Sea, and this evening I will come ashore at Honduras in time for supper.  Real world, my tasks today include our...

At least with automobiles over the years, the progression of annual model change produced cars that were safer, more reliable, easier to drive and more pleasant and comfortable to ride in. Whether to say more pleasing to look at is in the eye of the beholder, so I’ll say not to say more pleasing to look at , because frankly, I preferred to look at cars of the late 1920s and early to mid-30s.  But it’s all good. Except for the introduction of safety glass about 1929, almost all this has happened in my lifetime too.  Also happening in my lifetime, this morning I’m relating automobile progress to computer “progress” because every time I turn the blasted thing on comes up an announcement that a new and better version of Pages is available do I want to download it now or later? Well, I’ve read the reviews and my answer is never, not at all, not ever, I don’t want to download the gardenia thing at all, so quit the hell asking. But no, it doesn’t have “never” it give...

We are not instinctive, I once read, humans must think first, we don’t act by instinct as salmon head home to spawn or bees fly back to the hive with pollen, or as birds mate adulterously in the predawn for protection of the species. Or as cats' nature is to chase and kill.  And we have a couple of birdbaths in the yard that are fun to watch from the house, that we must leave alone because if their location is shifted even a foot it confounds the birds, who come flying up and skid to a stop in midair that the birdbath is no longer exactly where it was even if it’s a foot away in plain sight. Instinct, something instinctual, or at least learned unconsciously and stored. It was said that our only instinct is survival, a survival instinct. But there’s more. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) wrote that in each of us there is implanted a “sense of the infinite” that causes us to be religious. I have a new and unread book about this that I’ve just started, hope it isn’t lost ...