What a great world to live in where big and ongoing news is the awards announcement envelope mixup at the Oscars. These things happen, I suppose, it’s just that the odds finally caught up with them. Will the same PriceWaterhouse team be managing the envelopes next year. The film to appeal to me might be Hacksaw Ridge except that I’ve read the entirety of it online. I wish I liked movies more, but there was never a time. Well, yes, Harry Potter, Tolkien, Narnia, and that I was doing it with my middle school students at HNES. I probably wasn’t a good teacher, I loved the kids too much, all of them together and each of them personally, to be a disciplined and demanding teacher. It was that way as a naval officer too, it’s just me. Hot honey lemon water this morning, and now the black and dark. Last week’s barbershop adventure to Tyndall included a tour by the chocolates counters at both the exchange and the commissary to renew the little stash of heart healthy dark chocolate. At one ...

We have interesting hopes and sometimes unreal expectations of life and others. Day after tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Around the church, nation and world, folks will — it won’t be flock but maybe a few will trickle in — to church, to line up, queue down the center aisle, and each person hear the warning from Genesis 3:19, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” as the forehead is smudged with ashes (I smudge with my thumb and make a cross). It’s the notice of mortality that the Lord God spoke to Adam as we were ejected from the Garden. It’s what I expect, and to be returned- and scattered-dust, yea until Sol expands to consume “this fragile Earth, our island home,” and her planets.  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 … That was a wandering, again off into the brambles, the mental habit that marks my being. Where I began was the Ash Wednesday some thirty or ...

Port of Panama City is busier than most peoples’ lives these days, ships coming and going, bringing and taking all hours, including one entering the Pass at 5:30 this morning while still dark. Fun to watch them sail by, though often a ship seen before, as Progreso and Guadalupe 326x55 container vessels two ships making a weekly run between PC and Progreso, Yucatán. The pier at Progreso juts four miles out into the Gulf of Mexico.  Departing on Saturday, I was reading and almost missed it, Intermarine vessel Industrial Grace 554x83  leaving with reels for Takoradi, Ghana, West Africa, which I explored a bit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takoradi_Harbour  From the harbor I explored and found out that a highway between Takoradi and a near town is a long drive among plantations, sugar cane and other, and that one can stop and buy lunch, cooked bushmeat of grasscutters, a large cane rat resembling a huge guinea pig, which as well as hunted wild for bushmeat is also...

Our gospel readings for the First and the Last Sundays of the Epiphany Season are grand epiphanies, even theophanies (God showing himself), in which God himself speaks and is heard, not just sensed as in “surely the presence of the Lord is in this place, I can feel his mighty power and his grace,” but God speaking and being heard, First Mt 3:17 at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, and Last Mt 17:5 at Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountaintop, sound waves of God's voice, The Word piercing the silence like thunder, and people witnessing, hearing as their eardrums vibrate,  Mt 17:5 Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός   Mt 3:17 Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός literally, out of proper English syntax, “this is the son my the beloved” “this is the son my the beloved” most correctly, “this is my Son, the beloved.” most memorable, “this is my beloved Son.” The theological implications can be interesting, especially when slightly expanded on by wandering off into the ...

Writing late: yesterday was for me an overwhelmingly exhausting day, watched Bay traffic last evening slept until nearly six o’clock this morning, up, HotHLWater, black and dark, and off to walk. Parked by Holy Pavilion, looking fantastic, wow!  Gate opening right there on Linda Avenue beside, with newly marked off diagonal parking, Sundays it could be Holy Pavilion Episcopal Church.  Yesterday in Apalachicola  Places of the Heart Sitting on a park bench on the river while Linda shopped in Grady’s Market,  I couldn’t help noticing the lawn in the riverfront park was correctly  Apalachicola GOBoy Mowed but the church was locked. It wasn't always so. My last sabbatical week. I’ll go to Staff Meeting on Monday, then back for real Ash Wednesday. Sometime before life starts downhill, one way or another, train, plane, car, bus, I’m going back to Maine to visit the little town Andreas Wäller made home on arriving in the Pr...

Yesterday we watched and heard the USAF Singing Sergeants, our own Stacey Holliday on stage, concert in The Villages, Florida, two concerts streamed live at three pm and again at seven. A selective, exclusively small group of marvelous talent. They have a busy tour schedule, a bus or their own 747 like Air Force One? The practical side of me wonders what the Air Force does to keep them from catching colds and spreading the infection among each other.  Clear sky this morning, no clouds, that’s smoke from the paper-mill, breaking up into cloudish puffs as it drifts south and west and dissipates. From a young man whose wedding I’m to officiate in a couple months, a gift of tuna, so this morning’s breakfast will be tuna seared crisp on both sides and red center. ETD, our underway time is nine o’clock for Apalachicola. Lunch probably upstairs at the Owl Cafe. Of restaurants I’ve found there, they have the best fried oysters.  Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,...

Rain, 60°F 98%, weather flummoxes me, now it’s moving from east to west instead of west to east, why? IDK, maybe because what I see locally is part of a larger circling low pressure system. If this were June, that would worry me. Or May. Hurricane season, when the tv weatherman circles his finger counterclockwise he’s stirring up trouble. We may go to Apalachicola tomorrow, why? I meant to go twice during my sabbatical, and here’s it’s all used up but one week and we’ve not been once. Why? It was home for fourteen years summer 1984 through summer 1998, and there I ate oysters and mullet, though not to my heart’s content. And there found out that church management as vicar and rector was not all that different to independent duty on a warship. Both fit my personality: I don’t like nobody telling me nothin’. My brother Walt would understand. My life’s goal: as much space as possible between me and bishops or admirals. This morning I wandered into the brambles. How the jumpin’ BJeez d...

This morning already I have had my walk, down below outside and inside, hot HoneyLemon water and a cuppa black with a square of dark. Sent Madge a short piece for the March newsletter, piece and a pic though I expect her to toss the pic. Opened and read my email, answered one or two. Fiddled a bit, fiddle and fuss with the beginning draft of a theologically shaky Lenten sermon. Once long ago in a clergy conference a visiting English bishop told us, the priests present and attentive, that if we weren’t preaching at least forty-five minutes we have no business wearing the collar. My metaphor is that judging preaching by it's length is like evaluating a carpenter's work by his pile of scrap lumber. That's a simile actually, not a metaphor, but no wonder the English churches are empty.  Anyway, so now here I am back from walk without panting for breath, second cuppa, wondering what to write for this Tuesday blogpost, and tippy typing away as though I have somewhere to go i...

Do What You Love, Love What You Do Presidents’ Day. Not that I believe it ought to be changed back, I do not; but in our 1940s days at Cove School, the semester from after New Years Day forward was a long deep and glum slope into darkness: no holidays on the horizon. February was the one bright spot until spring and then summer vacation and mama’s permission to go barefoot until school started. February gave us Lincoln’s Birthday, Valentine’s Day, and Washington’s Birthday, each of which brought major classroom activity and decorating with craft paper making tall black hats, valentines, the classroom valentine box and designated postman handing out valentines, finally craft paper hatchets and green branches with red cherries to honor Honest George Cutting Down the Cherry Tree. "I cannot tell a lie." Then the long Night of the rest of February, March, April, and May until the only days that outshone Christmas: last day of school and first day of summer vacation. I do no...

"Have you read Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ?"  Just now finished it. Published 1963, eighteen years after the 1945 end of both WW2 and the Thousand Year Reich that lasted 1933-1945, throughout which the German people perpetrated the most horrendous, unspeakable documented crimes in recorded history, crimes theretofore so inconceivably evil that in judging Germany the civilized world established a new legal concept beyond war crimes, of crimes against humanity  Working through Eichmann’s trial, Arendt’s book is a taxonomy of German wholesale atrocities against primarily Jews, and of neighboring countries' participation, Croatia, Romania cruelest and most inhumane, not just Germany but nearly every European country entered by the Reich willing to cooperate in antiSemitic genocide. Eichmann himself, a banal, self-important, conscienceless, perfect dutiful, zealously loyal evil German creature of medium intellect, car...

Lord of rising sun and gentle rain, whose gifts are uncounted whose care is uncaged: free us from measured love which keeps a record of wrong and fails before our violence; take us outside the limits where we speak only with those who reflect ourselves; recall us to your image shining and alive in many-coloured eyes; through Jesus Christ, the peacemaker. Amen We are but a step from Lent, step and a Sunday. Jumping the gun as always, last evening and today St. Andrews is celebrating Mardi Gras, three blocks each of Bayview Avenue and Beck Avenue closed off for the festivities, view it all from our Beck side. Bay side is dark and drizzly, chilly rainy but I am having breakfast on 7H porch. Annual bead tossing parade at two o’clock this afternoon. We have family, Joe, TJCC, RayBritLil for breakfast &c. M&K invited. Rain, rain, go away, Come again next Wed-nes-day. First thing I see opening my lectionary site this morning, ad for a stations of the cross coloring bo...

In the face of outrage immediately after the November election, folks began pointing out that The People Had Spoken and it was time to unite, come back together as a nation, to get on with life and the business of being America. Even the psychiatric association reminded that remote diagnosis on mental illness and emotional instability was unethical and irresponsible under the profession's rules codified more than forty years ago. Yet division and criticism, seemingly based in hatred of the political, social and religious Other, continue and even have become institutionalized as part of some new America. When did this start? At least as far back as during the Vietnam War perhaps, which we came out of vowing never to repeat. In a later generation with the war on Iraq. Most recent, viciously concentrated with thinly shaded racism throughout the Obama years of bitter division and obstinate resistance to anything, everything. We are politically, socially polarized, evidently more def...

Thursday, 16 Feb cool out, cool walk, chili for breakfast, chili with shrimp on top and shredded cheddar, large mug of black ice coffee. Two ships departed so far this morning, one from each terminal. Below Griegstar vessel 670x106 from East Terminal, and her tug returning to base at Port PC. Rough Bay yesterday afternoon, white caps with wind throwing salt spray on Joe’s new car, nice ride, I drove it a ways. Iridescent color that varies depending on the sun.  Another interesting car that caught my eye in email exchange yesterday, 1937 Opel Olympia, a GM car.  With my 1937 Bayern plates, four years into the inhuman German Shoah. Why I got so caught up in it IDK, but it magnified for me several years ago upon seeing my German ancestry, visualizing distant blood kin cousins perpetrating the Night. I’ve owned several German cars. Opel, M-B, several VW cars. Likely no more, settled into GM cars made in Mexico, as in Mexico will pay for The Wall in the for...