Point to Point
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 fishing vessel, single-masted schooner style, moved out of its berth in the marina and headed out to earn a days wage. Some of their catch may show up in the local fish market, or on the menu at Captain’s Table restaurant -- which I also see from my bedroom window.
My delicious breakfast, which I ate at my table out here on the balcony. It’s an oak table my mother had made for me as a favor and kindness and appreciation for my being there for her in those days that were so painful for her that 1993 summer after my father died. It’s a round wooden table set on a heavy metal base Linda bought at Penny’s Worth, the church thrift shop that she started while we were at Trinity Church, Apalachicola. She modeled it after our church thrift shop she managed and worked in for years in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was The Opp Shop. (Opportunity). Used things that people gave or put on consignment for sale. We named Penny’s Worth after a church member named Penny (except she spelled it Pinny), who persuaded her husband, a Methodist, to sell us the corner house and lot right on the main street, for a pittance. Pinny Knott was her name, and my friend George Chapel liked to call her Piney Knot, at which even after years and years and years of hearing it, she managed to smile patiently.
George is for another time, another blog post another day. A first and close friend our Apalachicola years. Sewanee undergraduate degree, along with Bill Lloyd the smartest man I’ve ever known, George exemplified the difference between the NT Greek words philia and agape’ all my years at Trinity Church. Once, George and I had an angry confrontation in the living room of the rectory, and we came back from it.
And the breakfast itself, leftovers. A bit of roast pork loin, mixed with dark brown rice, dark brown gravy, made into a salad, slightly heated in the microwave oven, and spooned bite by bite onto toasted 40-calorie very thin whole wheat bread. And the cup of Kona, black and most excellent.
Flying by is something I love: watching that large white bird -- the one with long legs, is it an egret? -- gliding inches above the Bay seven stories below me, not dodging the dock that’s off to my left, but flying under it, between the pilings. Likely headed down to its usual place wading in front of my house a couple block down the beach.
Also (avoid starting a paragraph with “I”) I love preparing my Confirmation Class lesson for Sunday, the real work of it will be making sure it’s not too long for the 9:15 to 10:15 class time Sunday morning. This Sunday my topics will be “Theology” and “Scripture” and will include a short Bible study. As usual, I may try to cram Theology 101 and New Testament 101 into an hour.
Most of all at the moment, maybe I love that it’s Thursday, which at the moment has made itself my favorite day of the week because it’s all mine. Exercise on Monday and meeting; Tuesday exercise and Bible Seminar; Wednesday exercise and evening church supper, program; Friday exercise;. Saturday prepare for SS and church; Sunday, the most exhausting morning imaginable for a man looking at eighty. Thursday alone is mine. Nope, OMG, and gardenia to heliotrope, today a luncheon I’d almost forgot, the “clericus” (a group of clergy who gather once a month to tell each other what meds we are taking). Free lunch though. Chicken something.
NOT TO MENTION THAT TODAY I MAY BECOME THE GREAT-GRANDFATHER OF A TINY BABY GIRL.
NOT TO MENTION THAT TODAY I MAY BECOME THE GREAT-GRANDFATHER OF A TINY BABY GIRL.
TW+