Tarpon Dock Bridge
Where we sat this morning, 7H in the distance, as Robert told me the treatment for Cindy did not turn out: Shands is trying a new procedure with a 50/50 chance of success. As insane about his three girls as I am about my three girls, Robert is my prayer target, he, Cindy, Rose, Susan, and family.
Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, have mercy
Later looking out over Tarpon Dock Bridge, we had shrimp & grits. Mine blackened, shrimp pleasantly spicy.
Tarpon Dock: where SS Tarpon docked with my newborn father one day in June 1911. Friday the thirteenth comes on Tuesday this month, the day before my 81st birthday.
+Time my blog, and +Time+ the minefield across which I plod, are neither political nor religious, certainly not spiritual. though I do have a political anxiety, a religious bent, and a hidden spirituality tucked away none to know but me and the Ground of Being. A sentimental side that, loving StAndrewsBay and PC with all my heart, sees an early 20th century twin-masted fishing schooner round Davis Point and disappear behind the trees every time I glance across. Spiritually home to stay. Life because of that boat.
Political anxiety: what I hate is not what I fear. What I hate is the entrenched power structure in WashDC. But my political anxiety comes out of a line in Harper’s magazine, September 2016, “The Watchmen: What became of the Christian intellectuals?” speaking of intellectual anguishing in England and America three quarters of a century ago. Alan Jacob’s line (p.2) is “What democracy needed was a metaphysical justification — or, at least, a set of metaphysically grounded reasons for preferring democracy to those great and terrifying rivals.” Keen and otherwise spot on, Jacobs nods to but sadly slights C S Lewis, who had the reason, metaphysically grounded, in what Lewis honed down to “the Tao,” common human decency, the universal value of man’s humanity to man ultimately grounded in Pantokrator, creator of all that is, seen and unseen. Democracy is grounded in the Tao. Metaphysically it is not only Speaker, but Word itself, the Word spoken, religiously יְהִ֣י because Pantokrator speaks Hebrew, or scientifically “BANG” where Person and Word are One. External at the time Jacobs opens, Axis powers and the dogmatically atheist Soviet Union were not Tao grounded as the West. Jacobs writes seeing the West now strayed from that center into horrifying prospects, and that not external but within. We are a postmodern, post-Christian era enamored with what we see in the mirror of a morning, and so sophisticated as to deride notions of objective truth, placing Lewis’ Tao itself in mortal peril, our loss of chesed, what the KJV translates “lovingkindness.” Not ISIS and its like but bitterly divisive hatred amongst us, and most especially non-self-critical certitude. So then,
what do I fear? Repeal of the 22nd Amendment. What do I fear more? An executive order from a mad charismatic simpleton proclaiming martial law and temporarily suspending the First Amendment for the Public Safety. What do I fear most? A frenzied electorate
what do I fear? Repeal of the 22nd Amendment. What do I fear more? An executive order from a mad charismatic simpleton proclaiming martial law and temporarily suspending the First Amendment for the Public Safety. What do I fear most? A frenzied electorate
shouting Victory! Hail!
Never mind, it’s just me.
Saturday will be better. My daughter is coming.
Saturday will be better. My daughter is coming.
DThos+