My gal’s a cor-or-ker,  she’s a New Yor-or-ker, I buy her everything to keep her in style. She drives a Buick Six, I ride a mule that kicks, Yes, boys, that’s where my money goes. Up too early this morning. After falling to sleep sitting up at six-thirty, sent off to bed at seven-thirty, and zonked until two-fifteen. Up, black coffee, small glass of milk and thought to blog but wandered off online reading cover to cover the Buick full-line catalogue for 1923. In my day Buicks were all straight eights, but the brochure would have been the age of the song we sang some mornings at Cove School. “My gal’s a corker,” one of my favorites because of the Buick verse.  A 1923 Buick Six. Among the marketing boasts, a 124 inch wheelbase throughout the Buick Six line,   and a tough frame of selected oak and ash, in which carriage bolts have replaced the wood screws commonly used. The trunk and trunk rack are standard.  The four-cylinder touring car for 1923 has a...

Recently my friend Mike McKenzie from Atlanta sent me several old photographs of my ancestors, family from two and three generations back. There's a picture of my great-grandmother Emma Amanda Look Weller,  my grandfather's mother who died, as I understand, when Pop was born in 1872. A picture that especially interests me is of my great-grandfather Reginald Heber Weller sitting with his six sons. Alfred, Pop to me, was the youngest, sitting at the left, and I think he was twelve, which makes the picture perhaps 1884. Standing behind Alfred is his next older, and close, brother, my Uncle Charlie. Charles Knight Weller, who was almost four years older than Pop. Until Mike sent the pictures, I'd never realized because I only knew him in his seventies and eighties, but there is a very close resemblance between Uncle Charlie at sixteen, and me at the same age. In the picture are three Episcopal priests. Sitting, my great-grandfather Reginald Heber Weller, w...

Grouchy Monday? Some years ago a television program documented chimpanzees fighting off other, murderous chimpanzees who would snatch infants, tear them apart and eat them. The eerily horrifying inhumanity of animals with whom we share 98% of DNA returns to mind as a political movement wins followers by murder and unspeakable cruelty, speaking horror of the human race. Let me off the bus at the next stop. Volkswagen perversion. Power, greed that perverts technology designed to protect us, perverted dangerously against us for profit. Resignations, forced retirements, AYFSM? Lengthy prison terms, crushingly bankruptive fines personal and corporate. Or check how such crime would be punished in China or Iran. Caught, pervert, hold out your hand for a light smack on the palm. Disturbing to find the evil character of a company whose products I’ve loved, trusted and owned but will never again consider. GM’s deadly ignition switch? Toyota’s sticking accelerator? Ford’s Firestone tires...

The Most Important Thing Sunday morning. Never start with I. But I'm afraid. For this wonderful world as I knew it, have known it. Having scanned NYT headlines this morning, I'm afraid. Someone in one of the bestselling apocalyptic novels wrote prophetically about the ending of the world beginning in the Middle East, and it has done.  The world is best of all when the most important thing is college football. Walking down University Avenue, jeering hostilely “Yankee go home” as a top down convertible loaded with cheering Miami students speeds by minutes after the Hurricanes beat the Gators 20-7. December 1, 1956 and they beat us all four of my years at Florida. It was real. It was the way it was. It was the most important thing. Where's that time-turner? Football season welcomed back after the hottest summer on record, and to see Harbaugh start rebuilding MGoBlue and target Ohio State, CFB today is an escape from what is real into that world that was. BTDT, wa...

Brunch after walk down to St. Andrews Market

Last evening With the blessing of decent health, this is the cap of life. Venus, Orion and Sirius in a black sky. And is this final Saturday in September at last that morning I waited for all summer, that long awaited dawn when it's a bit too cool to stay outside on the porch without an extra shirt? Not quite: a comfortable 64F but 95% humidity. Not quite yet. Soon, very soon. Blather personified as TheD shifts his aim from Jeb! to Gator. Substance? Is there anything to TheD but ego and arrogance? How much do you weigh, TheD? Why do you want to know? So that if you ever fall into a vat of xxx we will know how much to dip out. Henry II, where are you when we need you? Angry fingerpointing as Mecca deaths go over 700. Something about us is compelled to find someone to blame, someone, anyone, anyone else . Easier if there's already someone we hate. Who went to the cowboy movie at a Saturday morning kiddie matinee at the Ritz Theatre and watched a cattle stampede...

After all these centuries, this pope could draw me back toward a uniting catholic church. Except that the status quo, what is among Christians today, denominations including nondenominational, seems to suit the feisty, quarrelsome, combative nature of man: we can never agree, there will always be wars, it's the ancient nature of our being, our way of settling issues. Don't graze your sheep on my farmland. Have we deluded ourselves as a race, “image of God”, surely God cannot be like this, like us? Or maybe God is: who has read Joshua, the Book of Joshua, Adonai murderously enraged with Achan and his loved ones? Deuteronomy 21:18f: the Word of the Lord ? You say so. Literal and inerrant? The obtuse simpleton who says God's definition of marriage is one-man-one-woman self-servingly skipped Genesis, Deuteronomy 21:15 et al to carve her own god. One God? Which one? Ronald Hals says God's one characteristic is grace. What about jealousy? Anger? Which of all God...

Giving out the Crackers in Heaven 13  People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14  But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15  Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16  And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. (Mark 10:13-16 NRSV) Part of the Gospel for October 4 - not to jump ahead, but why not? - summer ends and fall begins with Jesus welcoming and loving children. Many children, all ages, at our church. From down the street, the two little boys who adopted us weren’t at Wednesday evening service last night, they’ve been showing up, but they may only do things together, and someone said one of them was with his father in Alabama. What an interesting ...

Wednesday morning: I'm going to spend it – --  Time is “spent” and when it's spent it's gone. In fact, it's gone whether one spends it or not, and it can't be saved up for later. Use it or lose it – -- on myself, which despite promises to self I've not yet done after the rush of last week and weekend, which for me as an old retired priest was like Advent and Lent squeezed into a few days! I'm going to do as I DWP, reading a book. The preface stole my heart and the first few chapters snared me. C. S. Lewis A BIOGRAPHY by  A.N. Wilson, 1990. A birthday gift. So far, right from the preface, it's like going back in Time starting before my grandfather was a young husband and father. Time will change, because it brings Lewis right through 1963, when he dies within days of his 65 th birthday, six months before Pop died at 92, actually.  I love Lewis, not so much for his Christian apologetics, for which I think he was too intelligent. Rational, rationaliz...

Imagine That Human, including my own, decisions, indecision and preferences make no difference to Mother Nature. But this morning I find myself undecided about the predawn hour; that is to say, which is most wonderful, (i) the perfection of total silence with clear sky, stars, moon if it’s out and sailing across, a shrimp boat working the Bay, and seasonably cool, dry weather such that I need an extra shirt or light sweater; or (ii) lightning too distant for thunder in huge clouds moving east or west on the horizon far south over the Gulf, magnificent in the predawn; or (iii) a morning with threatening thunder and lightning flashing, rumbling, low clouds drawing closer until, sky covered, rain pours down and rain all morning. If weather fluctuates, so does mind, decision, and preference. The experiences in a house were far different to living high in a tower. On the ground was to hunker down, take whatever is, and wonder what’s coming next. Living up here, I’m an overseer: in uppe...

Nevermind CFB, season not going as hoped, Saturday a stunner, not going there this morning, my teams are off the chart, and yours dropped. SEC sunset. Muslim questions in the GOP tussle. Before 1960 people said a Catholic could not be president. A black person could not be president. A woman could not be president. At least one GOP candidate says a Muslim could not be president. Don't say stupid things. In the evolution of politics in a democracy, whoever the people elect can be president. Faced with disciples arguing about who is the greatest, Jesus takes a little child into his arms, answering the question for all time. J would really like our church, where children are first on Sunday mornings, most on Wednesday evenings, and two little boys from down the street have adopted us and we them. Six and seven years old, they come and go on scooters, shoot baskets, responded to our smiles, kindness and welcome, attended both services yesterday and came to the Altar for commun...

Pay Attention. Pray. Do Something. A short sermon in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on Sunday, September 20, 2015. Proper 20B. Mark 9:30-37. (verses 36,37). The Rev. Tom Weller 36 Jesus took a little child and put it among them; and taking the child in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Long years predating the internet, these are not “urban legends,” those outrageous and credible but sick lies that circulate on the internet and get people so upset.  Not urban legends, these are true war stories. This morning I’m thinking of two events from my own lifetime; two events and three. If my sermon this morning should be rated “for mature audiences,” I’m sorry about that, it’s just the way it is. 36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking the child in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welc...

Life Is Short Homily: Celebration of the life of Maxine Mahone (1919-2015). Grace Episcopal Church, Panama City Beach, Florida. Saturday, September 19, 2015. The Rev. Tom Weller I begin with a benediction from the end, because that’s where we are this morning as we celebrate life and its ending: My friends, life is short. And we haven’t much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be quick to love, and make haste to be kind. This has been the week of my eightieth birthday, I turned 80 on Monday, September 14th, Holy Cross Day. Eighty years old instead of “39 again” as my grandfather Walter Gentry once teased me. We called him “Daddy Walt,” and he loved Jack Benny’s weekly radio show, and Jack Benny’s old Maxwell car that Rochester drove.  The Gentrys, my mother’s family, lived in Pensacola, and Daddy Walt rode a bicycle to and from work every day until 1923 or 1924, when he bought the family’s first car, a brand new Maxwell touring car. M...

Inevitabobble, isn't it. Not death and taxes, but the sun's track, its orbit. All summer when the earth has tilted so that the sun's path is to the north, it passes over our condominium building here and never shines in our face or in our south windows. Summer is obviously over though, because the sun is moving south: Friday evening for the first time, half the setting sun was still behind the building and half was shining in my face as I sat on my porch looking west. In a few days it will show me no mercy for six months, all day blinding reflection on the surface of the Bay. Fortunately and thankfully, we've bought and Joe installed solar shades that admit 10% of light, cut glare and reduce the sun's heat while still admitting our wonderful view. Otherwise, the inevitable jumps out at me as this MacBook takes longer and longer to boot. After a full charge last evening, as reported by the green light on the charging cord, it took forever to boot. These things...