Oh my, I love being alive, my Lord, what a morning!  Her nets up, a shrimp boat heads in to St. Andrews after the night out, let’s hope she has a good catch. Over near the Pass a research vessel steams out into the Gulf for a busy day’s work at sea. Sure enough, the lights we saw far out last evening are a large ship offshore, probably waiting for clearance to enter port. And the firmament keeps changing colors and hues, and doing the same to my Bay. Yesterday we had beloveds over for lunch, shrimp rolls made with a large bowl of fresh caught. Rolls left over this morning, breakfast is a sardine roll. Smear of mayonnaise and a smudge of mustard. Cup of hot black. Tasks for today: finish drafting the worship bulletin booklet for Mothers’ Day, work in the attic at my house (with a sales contract and closing set for late May, I need to resume clearing out personal), and decide about Sunday’s sermon, whether to preach graphically about the Ethiopian eunuch or pause coming ...

We are studying ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ the Gospel according to John in our Tuesday Morning Bible Seminar. Instead of “In the beginning was the Word,” we started appropriately at the end with chapters 20 and 21 because we’re in the Easter Season with the post-resurrection appearances. We then went to the beginning with Gospel John's awesome Prologue and the baptismal scenario where John the Baptist acclaims Jesus as “Lamb of God” and John’s disciples follow Jesus. Andrew is first, and to use a modern evangelical notion, “brings his brother Simon to Christ.” That’s the purpose of the gospels anyway, isn’t it. Yesterday morning we finished chapter 2, where like a teenage boy who dreads being made the center of attention, Jesus expresses frustration with his adoring mother at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. “Mo theeerrr !!!” then does as she hopes anyway, his first “sign” as he turns the water into wine. As the story has it, the wine he creates is perfectly divine, the best. All four cano...

flowers ... Twenty-odd years ago at a highlight of life ... when I used to drive Nicholas back and forth between the Panhandle and South Florida, there began to be at some point in the trip, seemingly more sudden than gradual, awareness of change, that change had occurred; not was occurring but had occurred : plants were different, flora, the vegetation. Unfamiliar, even foreign, I didn’t belong here. Flowers, still Florida, but not, not home.   It’s more than geographical. It’s chronos. At an hour of hoping — more optimistic than expectant and not at all realistic, so might as well have coffee — that sleep may yet return, what comes instead of sleep is uneasy sense of hazy, murky, not line, between eccentric and weird. Writing. Thinking. Dancing fingers. A zone. Twilight maybe. Caution: others may notice, and that would not be good. Or is it kairos? And is it just me, or am I not alone by this window? Green light across the Bay, is that you, Daisy? Jay here. Wait. Wait fo...

A Christmas Carol “Mind the Gap” cautions this morning’s coffee mug with a map of London’s underground. Summer 2009 we gave Malinda and Kristen a week in London, and they returned with a souvenir that brings it all back. The trip, the trains, the recorded voice at each stop,  the sign confronting as one steps from subway car onto platform. It gets personal too. On the balcony last evening as the light faded and the pelicans flew west and the shrimp boats appeared, I sat down and read. First in The Story of J toward the end, where Bloom expounds on J’s Joseph character, a tattletale brat who ends up a dream come true. Bloom writes well if quite at length, whether because the Joseph tale is the longest of all or because a professor knows to fill ex number of pages to have a book to sell. Second read, a piece a friend emailed linking to an NYT article where I found myself hiding among the bad guys. Not as good or as smart as I may appear to be, wearing the black shirt, ...

Oh my goodness, pick one, choose, choose today, choose a disaster to write about  Devastating earthquake in Nepal,  Chaos and riots in Baltimore as peaceful demonstration for Freddie Gray turns violent,  Buses on Sabbath in Israel,  CIA drone program,  Mass firing squad execution of foreign drug convicts in Indonesia,  Russia hacking Barry’s email, Bruce Jenner has news. Dear Leader with Bad Haircut: what’s it cooking up? Something fer sure, something fer dang sure, as it can’t stand being ignored, longs to be center of attention, photographed grandly riding its 1950s submarine while its generals take notes. Pop quiz. Why isn't its submarine yellow? Because it doesn't know the tune. Why didn’t it scarf up Gaddafi’s wardrobe. Because one of the uniforms had holes in it. Why are all males in DPRK required to wear the goofy haircut? Because there’s a CIA drone with DL’s picture on it. Sunset last evening -- Today is the Fourth Sunda...

Blueberries for supper last evening, bowl of blueberries. Frozen, large berries from Sam’s, had them before. Earlier in the week I had two packages of buy-one-get-one-free fresh blueberries from Publix, tiny ones recalling wild blueberries we enjoyed in Maine summer 2008. Fresh or frozen, blueberries are one of my favorites, learned the first time my mother made blueberry pie for me as a child. Golden Corral's dessert display has “unsweetened blueberry pie,” which I tried once, thought delicious, had again the next time. Blueberry pancakes are my favorite, best was years ago, breakfast at Webers Motel & Restaurant in Ann Arbor. We were there for Nick’s high school graduation, Kristen with us. We went up by AmTrak, and the ride from New Orleans to Chicago is the swayingest track imaginable, roughly side to side all night long. We returned via either Washington or NYC and down to Jacksonville, a much better ride.  Thursday evening supper was oysters. Now and then I buy a pin...

gēargemynd Later this morning I will work at my house. There is extensive clearing out to be done, the attic, some closets, my heart. Clothes, papers and files, pictures, memories. There are many, many pictures to bring, even more in history, memory, my own and family history that has become as much part of me as if I had lived here a hundred years. Pictures of children, grandchildren, grandparents, great-grandparents. And there is that I can not bring with, and even so, no place to store but a crevice of the mind with embers that won’t quench. What's so special about this one, I have wandered through vacated houses before, a California house in sight of far mountains, a house in Ohio where Tass came into my life, in Northern Virginia a house overlooking a stream where Civil War bullets could occasionally be found, a creekside house by the Conodoguinet in Pennsylvania, a century old rectory in Apalachicola where Tass grew up too soon; why such wracking grief this t...

The Efficacious Finger Nobody needs an early morning weather report from some Nutty Bubba, but it’s four o’clock and pitch black dark out here on the north shore of St. Andrew Bay, humid with a slight cool breeze, looking from east to west and south, and now and then a flash of lightning way out over the Gulf of Mexico. Could that be, it seems too clear, stars in the sky, no clouds. But yep, there it is again. Sure enough, the map of the Gulf on my iPad’s Titan program shows a long east-west cloud with a spot of yellow-orange in the trailing west end of it, a hundred miles south of me and moving southeast toward Tampa: could I really see lightning from a cloud that far away?  What stirs in memory about distance out here is a rainy night, in my upstairs front bedroom with the windows and door open and a radio on, nothing but sea between me and Cancun, listening to the weather report of a hurricane forty-five miles south of Panama City and moving westward. That would hav...

Clear, cool, lovely Wednesday. Walk, breakfast on the back porch at Big Mama’s on the Bayou. Up earlier than intended, I got distracted online with Die Deutsche Wochenschau from early to middle 1940s, and those enormously long Mercedes-Benz cars, touring car bodies heavily armored, parading officials of the Third Reich. Besides Adolf Hitler this morning I watched Joseph Goebbels the propaganda minister sit down at a microphone in a broadcast house. Also Goering, Herr Reichsmarschall haughty and arrogant, resplendent and self-important in his white uniform, with his marshal’s baton. Cars always with top down. Goering with huge smiles, on tour, working the crowds. I always hope there are none of my cousins in the saluting arms and beaming, adoring faces around him. I see no innocence whatsoever. One of those huge MB cars made the US tour in the 1940s on a flatbed trailer, billed as Hitler’s car. It was parked for several days or a week on Harrison Avenue in front of Walg...

It's my blog afterall, not some theological or spiritual enlightenment for mankind, so if the first thing that stirs me mornings is nature, all well and good, it's my blog, for me. Clear and cool, 64F and a gentle pleasant breeze, this is the clearest morning since we arrived here at our home just under the clouds. But there aren't any: the sky is as velvet black as my Bay, and full of stars. Two shrimpboats are moving in my sight, but far enough across to be silent, and they are. They must find the shrimp in the shipping channels. Across to the southeast are the lights of what I take to be the Tyndall bridge, though I haven't been able to settle that with binoculars in the daytime.  The inky blackness of the firmament brings to mind a piece I found on Vox last night, "11 images that capture the incredible vastness of space." My unsettling habit is to stir such things into my theological mixing bowl, only to be caught up short when the cupcakes aren't p...

Waves lap softly against the shore just below, but the main sound is the roar of surf from the Gulf of Mexico, what, some four miles directly across the Bay.  Mornings at the house I walked down front for Linda’s PCNH, either down the concrete steps and path, or out the back door and down Calhoun Avenue. There were always the chirps of early birds trysting, don’t hear that up here except now and then from the park trees, may be seagulls screaming; but more, it’s flights of six or eight pelicans flying by the balcony almost reach out and touch close. Clearer here but sometimes I heard the Gulf surf then too.  Regardless, my eye always counted on the green light of a channel buoy across the way and stirring. Stirring because sometimes a thing, sight or sound takes on a being of its own, a friend you can greet and be glad to see again. Daisy? Daisy?  It may keep you mindful of who you are or bring present who you once were. Sound of the Gulf surf puts me at the jet...

Good morning, self. Strong wind coming off the Gulf and across the Bay, weather 32401 says 14 mph though up this high feels more like 20 or 25, quite a breeze. 75F 95% humidity, clouds fast and low, headed northeast. Weather says 100% precip but I think it has passed, is passing rapidly. Loud thunderstorm about 11 pm: instead of getting up to watch, I went back to sleep. My most exciting Tstorm recently was last fall at High Heaven, more than twice this high and right on the Gulf, well inside the storm cloud itself. That whole generous experience totally sold us on loving condo living and we are forever grateful. Looked out bedroom window yesterday morning to see flashing lights and multiple police cars, Beck Avenue blocked off from 11th street north two blocks. Crime scene, man carrying a rifle or shotgun, engaged police, shot, died. What do you expect? Comes to mind deranged . Typically ridiculous exchange of comments below the online PCNH article this morning sniping back and f...

In The Story of J , my book that I’m reading, Harold Bloom sees J as a woman in the time of Solomon and now Rehoboam. Living in the court as a member of the royal family, she reveres David, perhaps her great-uncle, as almost divine in the golden age of his united kingdom, which was raised to near perfection under her nephew Solomon and is now disintegrating under Rehoboam, her incompetent cousin twice removed. J’s contemporary and perhaps writing associate, even accomplice and they read each other’s stories, is the Court Historian author of 2nd Kings. I'll  explore  that again, next. In the book I’ve read Professor Bloom’s lengthy lead up to J, and David Rosenberg’s English translation of J from Hebrew. Currently I’m in the last third of the book reading Bloom’s fascinating character by character commentary, just finished Jacob and now about to start Tamar.  Professor of Humanities at Yale and professor of English at New York University, Harold Bloom claims n...

Born to Britany Smith and Ray Kelly last evening about 8:15, Lillian Belle Kelly, a healthy little girl. Our great-granddaughter.  As yet I’ve not held her, and somewhat afraid to, long ago having found out that when I hold a baby unexpected things happen inside me, emotions of the heart, feelings taking control. For better or for worse, they never go away. Maybe later. Sunset from here the evening of her birth. GGPapa

Okay, life is different from age to age, season to season, even day to day. Shame to admit, I have not always enjoyed life or been grateful for the breath of divine life within me; but at the moment I do and am as I sit out here on my balcony porch contemplating myself on an overcast muggy spring morning, and loving St. Andrew Bay from Davis Point to Courtney Point, Shell Island beyond, chaos below with its Leviathan, firmament above. For one thing, it’s 7:21 and there goes one of the large seagoing Navy craft, steaming out to sea for all the world like a warship on it’s way to battle. The local Navy base has at least two of those, yesterday both of them worked in the Bay and out in the Gulf before heading in to port in time for Happy Hour. I love having them here, and watching them, and as a retired Naval officer feeling ownership and being a part of them in a way that those aboard don’t realize.  From my bedroom window a couple minutes ago, I stood and watched as a f...

Interesting seasons we are having, interesting weather; maybe it always was, but I don’t remember it being quite like this. It’s a different perspective, maybe that’s it, having St. Andrew Bay for my front yard. Fog and haze. I once thought it would be good to sell everything and just live on a cruise ship all the time, in fact someone posted on Facebook a “Share” about an elderly person who was doing exactly that because it was more fun than a nursing home, better food and housekeeping, and a lot cheaper. Although I think there’s a point where they won’t take you. Fog and haze again, and the humidity is solid this morning.  We’ve had Peaden out. (1) Saturday afternoon the main downstairs HVAC went out at the house, not convenient ever but especially with the realtor having an open house Sunday. The technician arrived within minutes. A fairly new system, under warranty, needed a part they had to order, they are incredibly reliable and efficient, rang early Tuesday morning ...

Dreams are nutty things, generally forgotten upon awakening. Somewhere not long ago, when I had in mind to offer a Dream Group at church -- (I offered a Grief Support Group instead, and it led to close friendship with a man named Don, whose grief was overwhelming because his losses were overwhelming, and who himself is the only person I’ve ever known who died of a broken heart, I think of him often. We were the same age, his November birthday the same as my son Joe) -- I read that dreams are often caused by things that were on my mind the previous day. That may be so, I seldom remember my dreams. But I’ve not discerned that to be the case with the dreams that stick with me -- well, once, with a dream in 2008 that’s still with me, something I’d noticed during the day ignited memories and a long, vivid dream. But the dream I had within the last hour (it’s 3:43 at the moment) doesn’t seem related to anything at all. In my dream I visited Capernaum. Mind, I have no thought of going there,...