to live by

What, another beautiful sunrise developing before my eyes, right in front of me, though the iPhone camera doesn’t even begin to touch its magnificence. Two planets high in the east will vanish before reaching their zenith. That gray cloud has grown dark and the sun may tint it with purple before it goes black and moves on off to the north. 

The splash in the Bay, then another splash that I thought was a large mullet leaping, turns out to be a lone pelican. Now there are two birds, and here comes a white egret.

This is real, I can see it, I’m watching. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” but I’m seeing. Blest at this age still to have not only ears, but eyes to see, nose to smell, tongue to taste, and these dancing fingers to touch.

There was a gospel question at church last night, whether it matters about Mark, who wrote approx 65 to 75 A.D. that Jesus back in 33 A.D. prophesied the fall of the Temple that happened in 70 A.D. Whether the timing, the chronological factor, matters or robs the true prophecy of its "truth." Subtly, whether it matters that Mark wrote in retrospect, and does it matter which side of 70 A.D. Mark wrote on. It does matter to me as a Bible student who imagines Mark, a gentile Christian writing to a gentile Christian church, writing even as he sits, somewhat out of his chronos, among the smoldering ruins of Jerusalem. I think those who set Mark at 65 A.D. do so not because they have more precise scholarship, keener hindsight, but because they need to affirm the wonder of Jesus’ gift of prophecy. Faith steering scholarship. Not eisegesis exactly, but if you have to pick a number, a date, you might as well pick a date that is faith affirming rather than a date that continues the question.

My personal loss in this, as I insist 70 to 75 A.D. in retrospect of history, is being more into history than heilsgeschichte, time over chronos, facts over myth, when I might help myself immensely, plow through the fog of my doubt, were I to embrace the imagination that faith requires. Getting behind the wheel of that yellow 1951 Cadillac that’s parked in front of my mansion and driving it across the sky is a lot more appealing than what reason lets me believe. Singing Easter hymns, and Christmas carols not only during Advent but all year round and living into the BCP theology, “that they may have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those they love.” As I look at the stars, I ought to put away my telescope and listen to the campfire stories.

There’s the sun coming up, just south of the papermill, behind St. Andrews Towers.

I love a Thursday morning.

Well, they’re all good, all mornings.

it’s all good, Life Is Good.

In fact, it’s the Best.

I’m going with my father’s view that we have a religion to live by, not a religion to die by.

Thos+