All Of It  Delightful out, 64F at the moment, slightest movement of air up here on the seventh floor, not enough to call a breeze, but not deathly still either. 32401 Weather site says “clear” but 96% humidity and there's a haze that I can’t call fog yet, on the otherwise clear Bay. Haze now fog later maybe, but it’s my jewel box of rubies, emeralds, and a few diamonds, sparkling on black velvet. I thought a searchlight was playing on the channel to the west of me, and expecting a ship watched a minute until nothing came round the corner of this tall building, so not.  This may only be a perfect spring morning for a native Floridian. If there were a bell ringing on a harbor buoy, I’d be thinking of Newport again. The mind goes there often; I never know whether it’s the harbor, the lobsters and clams, the ferry, or the memories. We had two Navy tours of duty in Newport, RI and they were the best. In fact, I was so taken with Newport when I was there for OCS and subsequ...

Another wonderful weekend, with Tass and family here. Why does a house full of noisy girls make PapaDad so happy, I must be nuts. But no, I am  nuts, about them . The downer hits as they start packing up after Sunday lunch, takes its nosedive as they drive off, stirring memories of leaving Tassa at college so far away. That leaving turned upside down. If there’s an up side, it’s Jeremy leaving tea in the brown betty, best tea imaginable, hot or cold. Hot with a touch of milk. Cold just ice, never sugar. A large glass last evening with a bowl of cold green peas and lima beans, teaspoon of mayo stirred in, supper outside on the porch looking out over my Bay. Clear and cold, light corduroy jacket. By then the armada of Sunday afternoon sailboats retired.  Now Monday in Holy Week, those lights way out on the dark Bay must be a shrimpboat. Yesterday in Sunday School we discussed the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2, our Second Reading for Palm Sunday, Year B. The hymn's been mis...

With all that Life Is Good (and I do affirm that life is good and still good, and good nevertheless and notwithstanding, and anyway ), one who has lived into life and through life and knows (as my dog or cat does not know) that this is it and it’s about over and done, might wish that life could have been lived in a day and age and planet, galaxy, universe of beings brained for goodwill and lovingkindness. That is to say, instead of having lived with, among and as creatures, animals, things, godlike humans whose basic drive is reptilian -- are we created in God’s image, or is our god imagined in our image -- would have lived in a Plane without hatred, Newtown, racism, Holocaust, greed, My Lai, selfishness, Shock & Awe; thinness of spirit, substance and being; ISIS, certainty. Mainly certainty. A world with mentality so dark as to slam an airliner filled with happy schoolchildren into a mountain leaving parents and the world bereft, but a world still not ashamed, because in the age...

How do I come across these things, it happens as I search for -- not answers , there are no answers only findings, opinions, views, conclusions of scholars who devote their lives and earn their livelihood from exploration and sharing and publishing, and publishing mandatory new editions with colored pictures replacing black and white graphs -- as I search, sometimes feverishly lest +Time run out before I know everything, to find out whatever is to be found and contemplated. Maybe the joy of the search  is an answer to the nonplussingly obtuse question “What difference does it make?”  Yesterday in searching for sumpmnother about Anthony Bloom I found  The Satirist with Dan Geddes’ review of The Book of J by Harold Bloom. Actually, it’s Harold Bloom working over J translated by David Rosenberg; it looks to me like David did the work and Harold the thinking. What they did was browse the Pentateuch, cull out everything by the J writer, which Rosenberg then translated fr...

It has degenerated to a diary, hasn’t it, a daily rehearsal of personal nonsense, tripe and trivia that no longer lights even my own fire. Time to give it up, but gradual or bam? It's a habit addictive as the morning cigarette I never smoked.  Sitting here on my balcony gazing left, east, the eye tripped first by Mabel’s brick house (nineties, Mabel has been relocated to Tallahassee against her will and fuming), then by Landmark (sticking farther out into the Bay than private property should be permitted), then bounced to the clouds by the city skyline. Friday is dawning, no red in the east, no orange or yellow either, but some thin clouds are white because the sun is shining on them. Cool and pleasant out here, out here and up here, promise of a sublime spring day.  Tuesday I missed Cardio Chuck, and again this morning because today I must think and do, whereas I come home from Chuck’s sweaty, enervated and collapsing for a nap of untold hours. There was an age when ...

Crumples and Dies: Eschaton, the End of the Age “Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.” (Mark 13:31-33 KJV) Probably no immediate cause for alarm, but startling to read what evidently is the far end of Time, which isn’t going to last forever as blithely we thought. And apparently the Father isn’t the only one who knows when after all: scientist have a yardstick on Time, the stable earth, the deep salt sea. Tucked away in Delanceyplace this morning, an extract from The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (Natalie Angier 2007), discussing yoctoseconds and zeptoseconds. “By contrast, our seemingly indomitable Earth has completed a mere 5 times 10 to the 9th power orbits around the sun in its 5 billion years of existence, and is expected to...

Transparency A haven, the Episcopal Church is to me an interesting phenomenon among religious groups, characterized by the quip “you don’t have to check your brain at the door.” It’s a community where thinking is encouraged, not forbidden, even the Nicene Fathers are up for the turkey shoot. They are in fact my favorite target, but as the affirmation is “We believe” not “We know,” and restored from Credo to Πιστεύομεν I can hold them up and join in speaking for the church. This is not a church where one can be muted, silenced, as I’ve seen done to prominent and brilliant RC theologians who didn’t toe the line, some of whose books I have and have read. Good walk this morning, not our longest, but 57 minutes including two brief sitdowns. With the new construction, the courthouse will soon be out of sight from 4th Street Bridge. But then, if memory hasn’t failed, when I was a boy the county jail was there, so it isn’t as though we’ve always had a pristine view of the courthou...

Nobody, myself included, gives a hoot, gosh-darn or worse about the social political inclinations of some fool preacher; and as my call and mission supposedly are  not stirring up hate and discontent,  but spreading  peace, tranquillity, and blessed assurance, I try to keep my mouth shut. Biting my tongue doesn’t always work, sometimes I have to excuse myself and pretend I need to go to the men’s room. My early morning rule is Type First Read Later Think Never, but it doesn’t always work: my mistake today was checking email for replies from members of our Tuesday morning Bible Seminar, and scrolling down Gmail getting caught by NYT Today’s Headlines and CSM Daily Newsletter.   Life or death for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Of Boston residents, 62% favor life in prison, 27% death. All my life I have struggled that my convictions about capital punishment come out of my Southern heritage rather than my church’s position on capital punishment. When captured a couple days afte...

Hallelujah, my Father For giving us Your Son Sending Him into the world To be given up for all Knowing we would bruise Him And smite Him from the earth Hallelujah, my Father In His death is my birth Hallelujah, my Father In His life is my life My theme-song for today, this praise song we have sung here so many times over the years, is rolling through my mind this Sunday of the Cross as Jesus tells us in John’s gospel, by what death he will die. But the song is personal for me, as I pray that you bear with me through my story. +++ A hundred years ago there were no trees on the beach down front, only white Florida sand. That was still true half a century later, fifty-odd years ago, in a picture I found of my little son and my father playing on the beach together down in front of our family home. It would have been summer 1963, just before the Navy moved us to Japan. Because my house by the sea is for sale, we’ve taken most everything out, so I no longer have a table and ...

Cool and light breeze out here on the porch this morning, and one never knows what to expect, does one. Yesterday it was a large ship arriving silently in the wee hours. Last evening, in spite of my two hour high priestly Sunday afternoon nap, I dozed off after a TV special ended, and Linda watched another large ship departing from the Port -- to add intrigue I’ll say “slipping away to sea under cover of darkness.” We love the ocean traffic coming and going in the daytime, but until yesterday did not realize there’s so much traffic at night as well. Seventh floor is a marvelous vantage point. Yet I haven’t checked the weather, because once I go online world and national news will start jumping out at me, like Tolkien’s giant spider all bad, and I’m not ready for Monday to be spoiled. A good vantage point, as I say. To my left from the balcony I look down on Oaks by the Bay Park here in St. Andrews. Generally, the only voices we can hear in this most private area of Harbour ...

This nonsense is not journaling, a creditable undertaking sometimes to seek God or to be found by. Although thinking and writing helps keep me sane, when my weblog posts sink to the level of Dear Diary, I’ll see it’s time to quit. Now, for example. About 1:40, wakened, thankfully, from an anxiety dream by Linda rubbing my chest because I was shouting. An absurd dream, dark of night, encountering trespassers in the garage when I went for my car. I remember the color of their clothes, and they were as frightened as I as I picked up a large piece of wood and moved toward them, shouting. The underground garage beneath the house of a friend I’d been visiting. One of you had been with me, headed for your own car elsewhere in the garage. I don’t recall the garage from before, but the house itself has been in my dreams several times of late. An enormous house with a large section that is unused, vacant and unfurnished, ignored. The residents never go there. So far as I discern, it has...

This morning, Saturday, I thought to write other than musing about St. Andrews that won’t release its grip on me. But anchored across the way, across the Bay to my right beyond the red buoy that’s where the channel turns, lies a twin-masted schooner, black hull. For a moment the thought occurred, “ Annie & Jennie,  come for me.” But Linda sees it too, so I know that’s not yet the case. Not a good shot, I can see it but you cannot. Photo ops are so spectacular up here that I may have to take photography seriously for the first time, or at least get a cheap camera with photo lens, the iPhone doesn't do it. St. Andrew Bay takes my breath away regardless of the day around it.  Here comes a shrimp boat now, returning, across my seascape. And this, an hour later -> W in +Time and hoping it lasts a bit longer

not Pax It would be a worthless, boring life that had naught to do but comment on the fog, but here it sits again after a few days’ absence, whitening my view. I can see as far as the shoreline seven floors below and no farther. Ships in such fog proceed less cautiously now with radar, but there are the bells and horns and whistles. The ordinance my grandfather signed as mayor of St. Andrews, Florida a century ago in the early age of the automobile, brought mariner life ashore with its requirement that automobiles in town have a horn, bell or whistle to warn others of their presence.  My life is neither worthless nor a bore: yesterday I disassembled the antique ceiling lamp in the front bathroom of my house, replaced a socket that had stopped working, and put the whole thing back together, turned it on, and it worked properly. If I do say so myself, rather an accomplishment for one who knows self as a stumbling bumbler. And without getting shocked too or causing a black...

Several posts on FB last evening after our final Lenten Wednesday service at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church. Each Wednesday evening has been different. Two were our regular Wednesday evening worship, and after supper a short program about something related to Lent. Two were special worship services, one a Taize’ service; last evening we celebrated Lenten Wednesday with the Great Litany and Holy Communion, all chanted traditionally and well-done, and the FB posts of Stacey singing The Lord’s Prayer (Malotte), OMG. One parish where I was rector, we started singing that version of the Lord's Prayer every Sunday, the congregation singing it. I don't remember which parish that was, but they loved it. My part last evening was reading the gospel lesson, and at the last minute sitting there looking through the worship bulletin I remembered many services of High Mass when without exception the gospel was always chanted.  -- No, come to think of it, we had a service of Solemn one ev...

Sometimes the mind sinks into drivel, in my case often is closer, a truer adverb. Rising at four a.m. stirs shame for having wasted an hour of life and I could have gone back to sleep easily, in fact am near dozing in the chair as I stare out into the blackness. What do I see? The red channel light off my starboard bow: maybe I’m headed home?  In a row, several nights of seven hours sleep, and this morning waking not because of Fr. N, so wondering whether the dozen oysters I cooked for supper -- no frying, I pan steamed them with okra slime -- were more salty than I realized, causing this? Along with it, sluggishness. See what I mean? Bottom of the intellectual barrel.   Wednesday is a walking day followed by breakfast: eggs over medium and dry wheat toast. Not unbuttered because it’s healthier; dry to better soak up any egg yolk, though a proper medium egg should have soft yolk not runny. Why don't I just eat at home, my eggs over medium are best and I cannot stand...

And having laid down at eight o’clock to sleep, I wake soon after midnight feeling the summons of Father Nature, sharp. And deciding to ignore Him, return painfully to sleep. And scary visions. And wake again just before three a.m. And feeling His wrath worse than before, immediately I  rise to discuss the thing with Father Nature. And having picked up the eyeglasses and iPhone (of me) am deciding to stay up. And immediately having conferred with Him, I turn on the coffee brewer. And waiting for it to flash “choose product ready for use” I slide open the glass door. And step out onto the balcony. And seeing across the Bay the beam of a searchlight, I move to the balcony rail for a close look. And two green lights, moving together, from east to west. And the sound of a diesel engine loud. And thinking if I had the camera of RevRay this would a great long exposure make, green streak in the blackness. And the white above. And the red and green channel marker lights. And immediat...