Triphthongs, Tides & Taverns
Triphthongs, Tides & Taverns
If the church had Gesimatide, gesima Sundays before Advent and Christmas as the traditional church year of my youth once did before Lent and Easter, the upcoming Sunday would be Septuagesima, starting alarm bells ringing in our spirit about the changes at hand. And it would not be too early to start shifting our mindset to the season before us. Spiritually perhaps, not how many shopping days 'til Xmas but “where shall we go to cut a Christmas tree this year?” Which takes me into the remote woods of Bay County, perhaps most often across Hathaway Bridge, far out West Highway 98 to the end of the county and turn right or left down one of many rutted dirt roads winding among twisted scrub oaks hugging small pine tree candidates for the axe. In those days there was little or nothing of encroaching civilization in the miles of desolate stretch from Long Beach to the Philips Inlet Bridge except the Old Dutch Tavern
at the “Y”. One of those winding dirt roads was in fact where my father gave me my first driving lesson the Sunday afternoon of my twelfth birthday, September 14, 1947. All five of us in the dark blue 1942 Chevrolet Fleetline Aerosedan, my father calm and collected, mama a nervous wreck, Gina and Walt fighting in the back seat. The car grinding into gear, jerking, shuddering and darting into motion each time I stopped and started, letting out the clutch with my left foot and mashing the accelerator with my right foot.
So anyway, Advent Septuagesima, eh, and dreading the Sunday when the wild man of the desert will come storming into the outskirts naked as Elijah, shrieking curses upon the worst of us brood of snakes, and calling God’s people to metanoia with a signifying baptism.
Over the course of my life I have been several things vocationally. Allowing my mind to drift back because it’s going to do so regardless and I might as well share it, my favorite vocation may have been the semester with the Food Service Division at the University of Florida when I “worked the line” at The Hub, taking orders for the grill. I would have been 19, a sophomore. I guess there were guys too, I honestly don’t remember one, but every day a swarm of the cutest girls would crowd up to me to give me their lunch orders, each of which I jotted down on a yellow note and passed it back to the students cooking burgers and fries. Every day the cutest blond girl would work her way to the front of the mob, make eyes at me and order cheeseburger, fries and a small coke. At some point I got her name, long disappeared into the recesses of my mental state, but that was as far as it went. Making eyes at each other. Faithful and true, I couldn’t ask her out, because my KA pin was on a girl at a college in Virginia and I didn’t want to mess that up. Yep, that was my college major and favorite vocation.
Moving on to a later vocation and my thought this morning, in my years as a parish priest I developed a course of preparation for confirmation that began with my definition of a Christian. A Christian is a person who, because of believing certain things about Jesus of Nazareth, strives to live life in a certain way, the Way of the Cross. I think that’s what John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth meant when Mark the Evangelist quoted them calling us to metanoia.
And you will kindly pardon my examen, digressing into a memory that hadn’t surfaced in sixty years. Don’t tell Linda about that blond girl. I can’t even remember her face, much less her name.
Here’re the morning readings that impelled my triphthonic thoughts.
"Repent (metanoeite) and believe (pisteuete) in the Gospel." (Mark 1:15; cf. Matt. 4:17)
… there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth (a partire dalla natura che accomuna ogni essere umano su questa terra).(Pope Francis)
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/march/documents/papa-francesco_20130322_corpo-diplomatico.html
Thos+
If the church had Gesimatide, gesima Sundays before Advent and Christmas as the traditional church year of my youth once did before Lent and Easter, the upcoming Sunday would be Septuagesima, starting alarm bells ringing in our spirit about the changes at hand. And it would not be too early to start shifting our mindset to the season before us. Spiritually perhaps, not how many shopping days 'til Xmas but “where shall we go to cut a Christmas tree this year?” Which takes me into the remote woods of Bay County, perhaps most often across Hathaway Bridge, far out West Highway 98 to the end of the county and turn right or left down one of many rutted dirt roads winding among twisted scrub oaks hugging small pine tree candidates for the axe. In those days there was little or nothing of encroaching civilization in the miles of desolate stretch from Long Beach to the Philips Inlet Bridge except the Old Dutch Tavern
So anyway, Advent Septuagesima, eh, and dreading the Sunday when the wild man of the desert will come storming into the outskirts naked as Elijah, shrieking curses upon the worst of us brood of snakes, and calling God’s people to metanoia with a signifying baptism.
Over the course of my life I have been several things vocationally. Allowing my mind to drift back because it’s going to do so regardless and I might as well share it, my favorite vocation may have been the semester with the Food Service Division at the University of Florida when I “worked the line” at The Hub, taking orders for the grill. I would have been 19, a sophomore. I guess there were guys too, I honestly don’t remember one, but every day a swarm of the cutest girls would crowd up to me to give me their lunch orders, each of which I jotted down on a yellow note and passed it back to the students cooking burgers and fries. Every day the cutest blond girl would work her way to the front of the mob, make eyes at me and order cheeseburger, fries and a small coke. At some point I got her name, long disappeared into the recesses of my mental state, but that was as far as it went. Making eyes at each other. Faithful and true, I couldn’t ask her out, because my KA pin was on a girl at a college in Virginia and I didn’t want to mess that up. Yep, that was my college major and favorite vocation.
Moving on to a later vocation and my thought this morning, in my years as a parish priest I developed a course of preparation for confirmation that began with my definition of a Christian. A Christian is a person who, because of believing certain things about Jesus of Nazareth, strives to live life in a certain way, the Way of the Cross. I think that’s what John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth meant when Mark the Evangelist quoted them calling us to metanoia.
And you will kindly pardon my examen, digressing into a memory that hadn’t surfaced in sixty years. Don’t tell Linda about that blond girl. I can’t even remember her face, much less her name.
Here’re the morning readings that impelled my triphthonic thoughts.
"Repent (metanoeite) and believe (pisteuete) in the Gospel." (Mark 1:15; cf. Matt. 4:17)
… there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth (a partire dalla natura che accomuna ogni essere umano su questa terra).(Pope Francis)
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/march/documents/papa-francesco_20130322_corpo-diplomatico.html
Thos+