What’s it like out? Warm and overcast, but a good breeze up here while we wait for sunrise. Sound of water lapping ashore seven stories down could put me back to sleep. Bay is flat, not glassy but flat. I can’t tell for sure, there may be a light fog on the Gulf of Mexico beyond Shell Island, as it’s a bit hazy looking south and I can see the Island but not into the Gulf. Have I already missed the flights of pelicans heading east for their day; why do they do that? It’s my thought that my house buyer was not approved by his lender: yesterday he came to the house and hauled away the large collection of art he had on the front porch, and took away one of the cars he had parked out back, an older BMW 5-series sedan, black that he had painted silver, it looked like new. He’s slipped twice on contract closing dates and his third closing date is this Friday. I’m not agreeing to another extension, if he doesn’t close this week the sales contract is terminated and the house will again be ...

Wow, the lightning display over the Gulf is fantastic, incredible. In a great cloud that stretches from all the way east to all the way west, it flashes in the pitch darkness, lighting up the entire south. Yet, no thunder, so it must be far off, out and away.  Some weekends are more and this one was: all my girls were here. It’s quiet now, dark and quiet. Dark and quiet and very early. Fifty-eight years ago today Linda and I were married in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, and now I have this great cloud of girls who light up my life. Monday, a six o’clock walking day.  T

Early to rise, but today is Sunday and getting up any later than this would run me late for the morning. As well, our gospel reading from Mark is on my mind, deterring me from returning to other than a quick snooze after the chat to Father Nature. This one bit of dark chocolate melting on the tongue with the sip of Kona should quicken the mind adequately to order a couple paragraphs sensibly. Here’s the reading, in the Disciples Literal New Testament translation —  Mark 5:21-43 Disciples’ Literal New Testament (DLNT) A Synagogue Official Comes To Jesus About His Dying Daughter. Jesus Goes With Him 21 And Jesus having crossed-over again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd was gathered to Him. And He was beside the sea. 22 And one of the synagogue-officials comes, Jairus by name. And having seen Him, he falls at His feet 23 and begs Him greatly, saying that “My little-daughter is at the point of death. I beg that having come, You lay Your hand...

... and thank you Lennon-McCartney Nations are deciding about gay marriage in different ways. I can’t verify it, but here in chronological order is a May 2015 list from TIME of countries where same-sex marriage is legal nationwide: Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Argentina, Iceland, Portugal, Denmark, Brazil, England & Wales, France, New Zealand, Uruguay, Luxembourg, Scotland, Finland (2015, effective 2017). In Ireland’s recent referendum a large majority of the public thumbed their noses at their bishops and voted yes, so add Ireland. In America it has been left to the states until Friday’s 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court decided yes nationwide.  In General Convention (June 25 - July 3) http://www.generalconvention.org now meeting in Salt Lake City, the Episcopal Church will undoubtedly vote yes. A hundred years ago this would have been unthinkable.  Gay marriage thus becomes the law of the land and the law of the ch...

Some of these are about me, some not, most often I have no idea upon opening the blank page. But today I do.  Last night I went to bed at nine o’clock and straight to sleep as always. One wakeup call, about two o’clock, back to bed and straight to sleep again. Waking that hour a few years ago, I would have thought, “this may be the day, better stay up and enjoy life just in case,” but no more, I’m good. Besides, the short hours lack of sleep was too telling. So I’ve been trying to go back to sleep after being roused by Father Nature. Reading about meditation recently helped me find an easy way to do that. I choose a solitary and absolute focus: either the breathing or the tinnitus, either is effective. This morning then I woke at 4:48 a.m., cup of coffee with one square of dark chocolate with forest mint, and wide awake, ready to go, and it’s time to go meet Robert for our walk. Oh my goodness, I love this Bay, sunshine or gloom. Pax vobiscum and happy Friday. TW...

Black bears. Smelling our bacon frying on the grill and, paying no heed to us fleeing for the car, Linda pushing a stomach about to deliver, the wild ones waddle down out of the woods to enjoy our breakfast of sweet-rolls, eggs and bacon all set out for them on the picnic table. June 13, 14, 15, our weekend in Gatlinburg in a tiny cabin hanging out over a shallow creek that bubbled and gurgled us to sleep the night before. For breakfast we drive into the Great Smoky Mountains and stop at a picnic area to feed the bears. Late evening ten days later, thinking labor may have started, we walk into the emergency room of Athens General Hospital where to the nurses greeting us, I nervously say, “We need someone to tell us if we’re going to have a baby.” Looking at Linda’s abdomen, the small crowd of ER medics roar with laughter, hustle her into a wheelchair, and out of my sight. An hour or so later, June 25, 1958. Fifty-seven years ago just about now, Malinda was born in Athens, Geor...

Because of my foolish human nature I suppose, because my nature is human not divine, there is the ongoing probability of my saying, writing, typing, thinking something stupid; ill-thought out, incompletely researched. Off the wall. Nevertheless --- Years ago -- well it was May 1985, thirty years ago last month, wasn’t it -- there was great turmoil, a national brouhaha, over President Reagan’s visit, during his participation in a conference in Europe, to a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany where among the graves of 2,000 WW2 German war dead lie 49 soldiers of the Waffen SS. At the time, a priest friend of mine preached a simplistic absurdist sermon in which he chastised the objectors and said that it was time to forgive and move on. His remarks were skybalon , garbage, trite, trivial rubbish, painful and offensive in the extreme; because the German Holocaust in which the controversy centered, is beyond forgiveness by any but those who died in the gas ovens; and  those who loved them...

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid? -Richard Bach, writer (b. 23 Jun 1936)  From word.a.day, this is Anu Garg’s thought for today, often as intriguing as his word. Sometimes after a sermon someone in the congregation will tell me, wow, that was spoken directly to me personally. That’s my reaction today: this thought is pointed at me, I who, about to complete eight decades of life, often muse on how much of it has been well lived versus how much selfishly wasted; and to what extent I have honorably used my long years compared to those whose years have been cut short. Not only those before me in Weller graves at cemeteries around the United States, including Alfred, but those in Flanders Fields, and at Arlington; and especially in my heart and in my lifetime and in my service, those 58,307 whose names are on The Wall. I am terrified of failing...

From time to time, as now, I contemplate stopping the daily blogpost. My mental exercise program, but it takes more time and is more trouble to write than the physical exercise program is to walk. It shows more of myself than I care to observe or to reveal. It isn’t that there’s nothing to say, it’s saying such trivia into a world so deep in horror. In my vocation, it’s realizing too much and telling. It’s that my knowing is circular and going down the same street so often.  The ratty old yellow building where Mulberry meets 5th Street and W. Beach Drive was first a restaurant in my memory, Daisy Mae’s, opening in the late 1940s.  We went there after church for Sunday dinner now and then. I would have fried chicken or fried oysters. If “who are your people?” is the question, I think Daisy Mae was daughter of the owner of Mattie’s Tavern, where Hunt’s is now at Beck and 12th in St. Andrews. The old BayLine train station is gone, it was a pile of smoking, smoldering...

When a murderous nightmare of insanity happens in America, I can’t help but wonder if background may have seeded and nourished such evil in another shy, withdrawn, ultimately mentally ill boy. Was there a hateful, absent or abusive parent, a parent only concerned with self, or a parent who did not love the child? I don’t know the Daily Mail, maybe they' re a trashy sensationalist newspaper, I’ve never read them, but their piece was the first thing up when I googled “who is Dylann Storm Roof’s mother.” Dylann's mother appears in the article, a pathetic nonperson, the father is there too. Every child needs to know he or she is important to someone. This young man never had a chance. I guess he created his own importance.   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3131858/Charleston-killer-Dylann-Roof-grew-fractured-home-violent-father-beat-stepmother-hired-private-detective-follow-split-claims-court-papers.html Just as with Dzhokhar, and Adam Lanza, there are no excuses f...

Saturday: in a few minutes we leave to drive to Apalachicola for the funeral of an old friend and parishioner, whose husband we buried years ago. Bud was an architect, Jean worked with Linda in PennysWorth, the parish thrift and consignment shop that they started over a quarter century ago. Seems to me Bud and Jean retired to us from Connecticut. As the rector is away, I will officiate and be celebrant for Eucharist. In the background the muted television is on the horror in Charleston, the victims and their grieving families. Yet more cruelty that stirs terrible anguish, but needs no comment from me because the words are tired, all used up and apparently of no consequence to the more of the same that lies ahead. Why has such evil become epidemic in this American generation. Who are the perpetrators. The enablers. There is no place to go with the conversation. Pogo for President. W

Dark yet with no glimmer of day, but in two hours I’ll be on Linda Avenue behind Cove School for the Friday walk. Starting just as the seven o’clock mill whistle signals that for all the years, we are schoolboys again. On WDLP, Mayor Carl Gray advising on his daily morning show, "if you don't want to hear about it on the radio, don't do it." Cliff Upon Bay is an interesting place. Just beneath our porch, what for the last week or so appears to be a mullet hatchery and nursery was yesterday a feeding ground for sharks. Quite a large one yesterday morning, watching with binoculars, Linda guessed maybe eight feet long, almost straight down from us, streaking here and there with the speed of a lightning bolt, thrashing a breakfast feast in shallow water. Two more sharks later afternoon, smaller but decent size, in a feeding frenzy. The water below us is shallow way, way out; I’m not a good judge of distance, but fifty yards or more. People wade way out to cast, s...

Endangered Species Perfect, comforting wakeup: mug of black Kona, two squares of 72% dark chocolate with forest mint (Endangered Species) and a third square waiting on the table here by my lift chair as I look out through porch rails and across to Shell Island into infinity. Perfection itself, the chocolate is not chewed: one square perhaps, because the chew is as exquisite as the taste. Each square is domed to fit the mouth, flat side on the tongue, convex dome up. Slight sip of coffee. Close eyes, focus as saliva fills mouth and chocolate dissolves. Wakens body and soul more soothingly than coffee alone. Oh goodness. Thursday: peace. Here at any rate.  Here only. The Peace of God Another shooting. Most of us may be decent, but Balrog has escaped from Middle Earth, seized Potter’s invisibility cloak, and roams at large, out and about after daylight. Like the pooka, it appears to this one and that one as it will. Stirs fear, hatred, terror, why? because it can. P...

This is my Wednesday blogpost, the earlier one was rubbish, don’t read it. I’m certainly not going to, I’m not even going to bother deleting it. Yesterday I had the great joy of confirming to myself that there is still wisdom in my heritage, the Episcopal Church. I’ve served under several bishops and watched several episcopal elections, and always known capable and deserving local priests, and wondered why the discerners chose as candidates, and the diocese elected as bishops, a stranger “who knew not Joseph.”  This time in our diocese I was delighted to see among the candidates, and finally as our elected bishop, a hometown boy from just up the road a piece, Russell Kendrick, from Fort Walton Beach. He comes immediately from a parish in Birmingham, Diocese of Alabama, but we chose Russell to be a priest, and we know Russell, and Russell knows us. He will not be wandering around for months or a couple years meeting us and learning about us. Russell is back home, and I am b...

All is not as it seems, and it just don’t git no better’n-nis. Last night to bed at 7:16, up at midnight for a short chat with Father Nature, back into the warm bed, and finally forced out again by Father Nature jumping up and down on my bladder again at 4:48. So that’s what, over nine hours of sleep? Unheard of! But what I’m thinking as I sit here letting the fingers trip lightly over the keys is how delicious that fried rat looked on TV just now. Linda has Channel 13 on and they were showing, I think it was a KFC place that some buyer ostensibly got a piece of their new boneless fried chicken breast that happened to turn out looking like a rat, tail and all. There was another piece that looked like a fried chicken head. I think it was all coincidence, actually real chicken breast, and supposedly funny. IDK, the KFC place on 23rd Street at Airport Road seems to have closed, which didn’t especially surprise me, the location was awkward to get in and out. Church’s and Popeye’s are ...

One of life’s blessings is distracting, annoying minor inconveniences. In the dark, turning on the coffee pot by feel, slipping my PAPA mug into the opening, pressing the middle button, and darting off to the bathroom — returning to find the mug empty and the overflow reservoir full of hot coffee. In the dark I’d positioned the mug just off from the spout.  For mental discipline, it’s good when a goof is one’s own fault; even better, to recognize that; perhaps best, to be aware that one is facing one's own fault. Years ago I worked with a man who always found someone else to blame for his own mistakes, whose portrait would have made a textbook cover for narcissistic personality disorder. Working around him was an exercise in learning to be self observant. My Bay is lovely this morning. Flat but not glassy. Light blue, but a shade or two darker than the sky above it. Across, beyond Shell Island and over the Gulf, coasting along just above the horizon, is a long, low cloud t...