My intent for adult Sunday School this morning is to read and discuss Peter’s speech that begins at Acts 2:14 and which Luke concludes at verse 41 saying “those who welcomed Peter’s words were baptized, about three-thousand souls that day.”  The matter doesn’t especially torment me, but in my bumbling uncertainty I am always wondering and trying to figure out the evangelist’s christology, and I’m never sure about Luke. John’s gospel is easy and clear, but the synoptics are not, especially Mark, and I resist being led by what I always thought or want to conclude. So I’m unsure what Luke is thinking when he says God made Jesus both Lord and Christ (Messiah) (both?, and?, so that's two different things obviously), and at Acts 2:34 when he has Peter quoting from Psalm 110, “the Lord said to my Lord …” a verse that some see as christological and some see as confusing. Originally it’s not confusing at all, coming from the Hebrew bible that reads   נְאֻם יְהוָה , לַאדֹנִי -...

Looking online for movies this week, I found and watched some Russian films free on Youtube, Road to Berlin with English subtitles, The Cuckoo with Vietnamese subtitles and a bright light in the middle of the screen to deter me from watching it free, The Last Train that listed English subtitles but had only Russian subtitles for interpreting German, where I recognized a sound доктор. Recent films, all were situated in World War Two, which is what I was looking for. Set in dark, bitter Russian winter before the Germans were pushed out of Russia, Train was so depressively drab I don’t remember noticing whether it was color or black and white, I may go back to see.  Before watching   Cuckoo , I read reviews and saw it didn’t matter about the subtitles, because the three characters speak respectively Finnish, Russian, and Lappish and don’t understand each other at all, which causes all manner of mixup including comic, frustrate, and near-tragic. English subtitled is ava...

Not that I have a football team, don’t follow professional sports, although Cleveland everything moved into my heart after my 2011 visit to Cleveland Clinic. While there I adopted the Cleveland Indians and still get all their news and offers, and checking Bleacher Report this morning I’m glad to see the Cleveland Browns drafted Myles Garrett after the Johnny Manziel debacle, which at least got him out of the SEC. Wishing the Browns a hundred twenty years. College only, my favorite football teams are the Gators and the Wolverines and whoever is playing Ohio State and FSU but as a Jim Harbaugh enthusiast I’m keeping my mouth shut. Looking at weather instead, decent morning for a walk and if presidential elections can beat long odds, check out worst case scenario for cataclysmic ice sheet melt in Time https://weather.com/news/climate/news/sea-rise-america-climate-central . I moved TWC’s cataclysmic scenario map mile by mile down the east coast from Boston to Jacksonville and acr...

Low overcast and noisy surf action below. Still dark, at 7H porch rail windy Thursday morning. Weather radar shows rain in the Gulf of Mexico, coming this way.  Tentatively, one commitment today so far. An issue of aging: to be taken seriously regarding personal concerns. Correction, not concerns , which sounds like worries yet isn’t, but ordinary things about advancing life. Not to hear such as “oh, we don’t want to talk about that” if what’s on mind is dying and death, or “oh, we all die, that’s true for all of us.” In the past couple weeks, as priest, pastor, neighbor and friend, I officiated three funerals. This week a friend and onetime parishioner whom Linda looks after was checked out at hospital for strange symptoms and found to have in a lung, a “large mass” that spreads to the adrenal gland. Even pastoring can be quite personal and though my health is decent, I’m self-aware and at this age it’s somewhat like the tide coming in. Absolutely not to say worry or...

Changing by the instant, pink-tinged gray clouds, 65% humidity, 69 degrees, and the most wonderful soft, cool, salty breeze coming off the Gulf of Mexico, an exquisite Florida morning at 7H. Barely a ripple on the Bay surface as it washes up below, slapping the shore. Glad am I that I was born and grew up here, otherwise I might never have known where to come for the rest of my life. As close to heaven as I’ll ever need, don’t look for me. This is why, in The Great Divorce , there was no place for the photographer in heaven: ongoingly too magnificent to capture on film.   Gulls flying by, no pelicans or ospreys yet. Black coffee and four small bite-size chunks of the last of Easter ham. The grain of saltiness has an oblique sweetness that’s a welcome surprise in this morning’s square of Lindt dark chocolate with sea salt. Today: maybe Tyndall, haircut, Wednesday, two commitments to keep.  Last evening I sat on the edge of the bed and watched Linda’s program, a travel v...

Lord of the gathering feast, you walk with us on the shadowed road: burn our hearts  with scripture’s open flame; unveil our darkened eyes as bread is torn and shared and from the broken fragments bless a people for yourself; through Jesus Christ, the host of the world. Amen. Our bible story for Sunday is “The Road to Emmaus” adventure that is told to have taken place the afternoon of Easter Day. The story is below (scroll down). One of several so-called “post-resurrection narratives,” it has no parallels and so is Luke’s own story. Scholars of the Jesus Seminar see that in casting Jesus’ disciples as too slow witted to see what’s right before their eyes, Luke somewhat echoes a primary agenda of Mark. There’s also Luke’s theme that Jesus’ entire life was destiny fulfilling biblical prophecy about this ultimate prophet of God. On a personal note, I somewhat resent that scholars who translated the NRSV consistently insist on rendering Χριστὸν as Messiah,...

    4:49 Monday morning, in two hours I should be parked at Holy Pavilion waiting for Robert to arrive for this morning’s walk. Overcast, low dense clouds by the look of still predawn light, we have a cool morning with pleasant if stiff breeze that will be a memory to die for come August. Reading, occasional good stories such as A Gentleman in Moscow and fiction my children who know me know I will love. More often essays I come across at online news sites, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse this morning.  In other reading, mounting concern with megalomaniacal narcissists whose pond for self adoration is evidently murky and choppy, unlike the reflection seen by the legendary god. We cannot see the hideous in ourselves. Let the reader understand. My worry is banty rooster strutting with DPRK. God willing, a peaceful week ahead and let all the people say Amen. DThos+

Sermon/homily on Sunday, April 23, 2017, in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. The Rev. Tom Weller Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. John 20:19-31: that’s a fine gospel, but I’m not going to talk about the gospel, I’m going to talk about our collect for today. So, with every head bowed and every eye closed let us pray, as we listen closely to what we pray: Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Easter mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: May we who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body show forth in our lives what we profess by our faith; through Jesus C...

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth … Late yesterday afternoon, at a small gathering of family and friends dear to Father David and Olive Damon - - our first rector at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Father Damon officiated our wedding nearly sixty years ago, and I last talked with him a few days before he died fairly recently - -  I found a Publix brand ham as delicious as the costly Easter ham I ordered from out west. Before that gathering, I’d officiated a funeral, burial service for friends of standing longer than my own life, going back all my growing up years, lo into the life of my grandfather and the 1936 hurricane that obliterated Pop’s fish house that was out on the pier where now stands Landmark Condominiums at WBeachDrive and Frankford Avenue. At this age, even the earthly residuals of my own personal memories slowly evaporate, dissipate into the ether of eternity. Not sad, it’s simply the nature and way of Creation and seasons of life on ea...

There are two of us. I like our dishes, the plates we eat from at a meal, to match. We have a few sets of dishes. When we packed up and moved from the house, the children were given any sets they wanted, most were sold at auction, and we kept a few sets. The “good china” people gave us when we were married, I don’t like it, never did, never have, never will, but it's ours for life with all that signifies, and I'm not letting it go. Linda and her mother selected it, from England, it’s called Wedgwood “Blue Florentine” and the design around the rim has serpent tongues weaving in and out of the eyes of skulls, bon appetit . Our last semester at Florida, I showed it to my friend Jerry, who said, “Weller, I wouldn’t hit a hog in the rump with that.”  For our marriage good silver, I wanted a pattern with a shell called something like “fiddle, shell, thread,” but Linda and Paint chose flatware that blended with Mrs. Peter’s "Francis I"  and now we have plenty of sil...

God stuff “Life is Good” says the sign on my orange hat, “Do what you love, love what you do.” That’s the way it is. Loving life, loving living at 7H, loving hearing what I hear, seeing what I see, doing what I do. Even arising at one-thirty-odd in the wee hours to sacrifice to Father Nature, life is good. Even going back to bed, not being able to return to sleep, and quickly up again to write a funeral homily and arrange two psalms for responsive reading, life is good. But it’s now four-forty-four and sleepiness is returning, though if I go back to bed now, I’ll sleep halfway through the morning, past the walk, past breakfast, and not feel right about myself.  So I’m eighty-one and’ve known since I was ten that I would be doing this throughout life, Gott Zeug, though I did manage to avoid it the middle twenty-five. But homilies, liturgy, sermons, pastoral calls, hospital, vest, smile beatifically, what. Religious, theological, political and social views.  In America, ...

70.3°F 84% on 7H porch, gentlest breeze stirring the various lilies, orchids, rosemary; the tomato plant that has given us one red tomato now has two more near ready and several still green but growing. Black coffee and a square of Ghirardelli dark with cabernet grape. On a scale of one to ten, I’ll give this Florida morning a thirteen. No, there’s a haze over StAndrewsBay and reducing visibility across Shell Island into the Gulf, so I’m cutting that to an eleven.  Holy Nativity Episcopal School, a ribbon cutting at Holy Pavilion, and a surprise more like a striking stun: one of the three large bronze plaques includes our name  on this, a place of my heart since I started first grade there the day after Labor Day, September 1941. That this would be done for us steals my heart away. My mother took me into the classroom, Ms Violet Heyward held out a yardstick and told me to kick at it, apparently I kicked with my right foot, whereupon she proclaimed me right-handed...

Blue yesterday, not always blue, red Saturday morning as Lauritzen’s Indian Bulker 587x97 quietly slipped past Courtney Point with wood pellets for Immingham UK,  but Tuesday was blue: a tug servicing the dredge along WBeachDrive, and Linea Line’s Guadalupe 326x55 making her regular loop between here and Progreso.  The Lauritzen ships are among the largest that call at West Terminal, but the Star-named vessels of Griegstar into and out of East Terminal range to about 670x100 or more. A tragedy? IDK, if there was tragedy it was his life, Aaron Hernandez of talent taking his life in prison to end a violent life and a murderous psychiatric set to his personality. He played life hostile, rough and irrational, I wonder whether brain damage was a factor. Life is not ours to waste. He might have been a star, a hero inspiring young athletes. Wednesday, a treat. A ribbon cutting and supper out. DThos+

Honestly, I never thought of barbecue as political food. It’s sure enough regional, the proud sauces put on the same pork shoulder or pork butt vary greatly from place to place, one region to another throughout the South. A favorite, which I still have one or two unopened bottles, has been a vinegar and pepper sauce I bought while with son Joe in North Carolina, or Joe brought me later. It also makes good salad dressing, I did that for years of weight control instead of creamy blue cheese dressing I sometimes make. And I’ve liked the yellow mustard based sauce from South Carolina, including at times've had a bottle with Confederate flag on the label, though I never realized, it didn’t occur to me, that it deliberately signified.  From yesterday's online The New Yorker , below’s a link to an article that I read and I value. Raised in fried mullet country not barbecue country, I don’t, probably can’t , appreciate the barbecue tastes, secrets and rivalries, some bitter, appar...

Thinking about a sweep of spring cleaning, what do I have cluttering the desktop of this MacBook?  True Religion by Karl Barth  The Idiot by Dostoyevsky, read it, why is it still here NYT article “To Change the World, Change Man” by Michael Laitman, who wrote “Who Are You, People of Israel?”, read it, been on my desktop since July 2015  books from C S Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia, “The Magician's Nephew,” “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “The Horse and His Boy”  Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, full lot of it, read some of them text of Our Town by Thornton Wilder picture, 1949 Plymouth station wagon  English translation of the letter scrap Morton Smith found with text of Secret Mark  file with links to eight Leonard Cohen songs  text of “Romans 3,”  Stations of the Cross  file containing fifteen old preached sermons  book "Prince Caspian” from Narnia  link to MarineTraffic/Global  interliner G...