In the house there wasn’t the urge to become obsessed with the weather, but here in 7H we have an unobscured 180° southern outlook where we stand admiring creation’s living mural. This morning I came outside at four-thirty and looked up at a black, starry sky, Orion high in the east. The Bay’s flashing navigation lights, red, and my green light across, beyond it Χάρων the ferryman of Hades casting off and coming my way. Thinking I saw a burst of light in the east, I move to Linda’s chair by the porch rail, and sure enough, there’s lightning in more than half of my southeast quadrant, stretching from elegant flashing in the clouds over the paper mill round to the occasional streak, lightning bolt far off beyond Tyndall Field. Tyndall’s control tower light is not sweeping round white green white green, and I don’t remember it being on last evening. I love to watch when they fly night ops, bingo, touch and go from, what, Apalachicola back, down, disappear, and back up, round by us, west ...

Intrigued, last evening I looked up Richard Simmons and Graham Kerr (let the reader understand) and remembered Simmons. I could not stand Simmons, a repulsive figure for some reason I never worked out, just changed the channel.  Here’s what I think. In Time I’ll be fine again, I’m counting on it, counting days on it, days and weeks. And anyway, Time is all I have to work with, isn’t it. Flashbacks will fade in Time --  -- in spite of my view that Time is a human construct to understand and explain where we are and what we’re doing here.  Last evening I read and enjoyed this http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/the-multiverse-as-imagination-killer/497417/?utm_source=nl-politics-daily-082916 . The multiverse idea makes sense to anyone whose God is not too small, to call on J. B. Phillips and perhaps Karl Heim. But counter to Sam Kriss, the idea starts with ongoing Big Bangs and seeing our infinitesimal minusculinity, speck on a speckn...

Coffee black and intense dark chocolate to stir mindfulness. Pitch black dark at 7H, but Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.   Stars out, that geostationary satellite, in the blackness the sky seems clear but for lightning flashing somewhere. 78° 91% and the cute little weather symbol for today is a raincloud. TDNine 35 mph movement west at 9 mph, to turn north, around NE, become TSSumpmNother by 2 AM Tuesday, curve up through Apalachee Bay, across to Jacksonville and out to sea. It isn’t Time that heals, there isn’t enough time for that —Time catches up with but doesn't heal -- despite "old Father Time, who was once a King in Overland. Now he has sunk down into the Deep Realm and lies dreaming of all the things that are done in the upper world. … They say he will wake at the end of the world.”  While he lay dreaming his name was Time, but now that he is awake he will have a new name....

Lazy bones, sleepin’ in the sun how you gonna get your day’s work done? Never get your day’s work done sleepin’ in the noonday sun. Lazy bones, sleepin’ in the shade how you gonna get your livin’ made? Never get your livin’ made sleepin’ in the evenin’ shade. Welcome! Sunday morning, age to age shall say: Yesterday after the service for Ray we came home, poured a glass of red, cab it was, last of a bottle of Chateau St. Michelle. Linda dug out of my right ear with tweezers, the little soft plastic “dome” that had slipped off of my hearing aid, I was always concerned that might happen. I transposed funeral homily to +Time, posted, linked on FB, and tried a nap. Nap didn’t work, mind still twirling. Five years ago last month, my mother died, July 17, 2011, a rainy Sunday morning. That afternoon after making my calls and agreeing with my brother and sister to postpone mama’s service for two weeks until all the nieces and nephews got back from vacation, I got ...

All You Need Is Love Homily for Ray Wishart Saturday morning, August 27, 2016 St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church Panama City, Florida The Reverend Tom Weller I shall speak of Love: the love of Jesus. You may be seated. Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40) Jesus said “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. As I have loved you, that you love one another. By this, all will know you are my disciples, that you love one another.” Now abide faith, hope, and Love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love. Hundreds upon hundreds of friends and students and family who love Ray Wishart and know he loved us, flooded the air with memories this week, m...

Forest Panama 442x69 arriving from Colon 0517 hours with cargo, next port Limon.  How long before it's not the first thing that comes to mind upon awakening?  Dawn does come, comes anyway. And Sunday is coming, Easter, even Easter, with the dawn.

Barge across the way, tug with her barge in large letters Express Marine, Inc anchored in the far channel. Last evening we watched them settle for the overnight, who knows where they’re headed. Likely off at first light and gone when I return from the Friday morning walk. Still numb, mind somehow shut down since Monday. It will recover In Time because there's nowhere else to go, maybe starting tomorrow, Saturday afternoon, but I neither hope So or Not.  Wanted: Harry Potter’s time-turner, a world with a different sort of magic making all things new. ... gulls swooping by and dipping down as light comes Noontime: tug and Express Marine barge departed, back out into the Gulf.

Courage, my soul Years ago, when the Navy had me in an MBA program at the University of Michigan, we lived in an old style housing project that doubtless dated from a WorldWar2 housing shortage. Our own apartment was private, we had an end unit with windows on three sides — somewhere around here is a picture of us at the picnic table we had out front, with Joe, Jody then, sitting on the table and me giving him a haircut — and out behind the rows of long project units (long buildings like “Drummond Park” and “Annie B. Sale” that we had here in Panama City to help accommodate the wartime population explosion) was a long, wide open grassy area where families picnicked and visited, and where there were always many children playing, and mothers could see and watch the children from the apartments, and it was safe. That seems long ago in earth years and human Time.  It was a special Time of life, and one thing I especially remember is the ending, every part of life has an En...

Nice out here this morning, too dark to read the weather bar with temperature and humidity, but the breeze is cool, gentle, and pleasant. As my orange cap says, Life Is Good. Quiet now too, the shrimp boat having puttered round the channel bend and home to her berth in StAndrews Marina. Life is good. Not always as good as my orange cap proclaims, not as good as it was forty-eight hours ago, but good. It just won’t go away will it, the sadness, swelling in chest and throat. My years, I never could weep until the day I sold my house (well one other Time long ago in Time, not in God years but in Time) and since then it’s come too easy. Not manly, is it, we don’t do this. I realize it’s too soon and getting through takes Time, but each of us is gift to someone, and    there never seems to be enough Time   To do the things you want to do,       once you find them  Jim Croce, 1973, remember? I do. What I learn in Time is that we don’t...

Life is a gift, isn’t it. A free gift. Life comes to this one and that one as it will, and moves on. I never had a right to Ray Wishart as a friend in my life, Ray was a gift, a special and unexpected gift who just happened to me. It started in 1998 when I retired from parish ministry and came home to Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, and Ray was there and one of those who sat next to me behind the Altar on Sunday mornings, behind the Altar and under the Christ, under Jesus. If the sermon was overly long, I would notice Ray looking up at the Christ figure for the real message.  Everyone who knew Ray has a story this morning, stories. Ray was a teacher for forty years, maybe the most popular and loved teacher in all the history of Bay County, and he taught several generations, all of whom will be remembering their Ray Wishart stories this morning.  He wasn’t a teacher only, he was a gift. In fact, one of my stories is that for a while I got to be Ray’s teacher, he e...