Splash, no telling what that was here on the dark, darker, darkest creek; beyond, human sounds, vehicles on the bridge that I shook holy water on to bless and open twenty-something or thirty years ago, pickup trucks as folks arrive to start their day in town.  Below, voices, someone loading red cooler and fishing gear into a boat docked here overnight. They came to fish, we because this is as far as we’re interested or willing to drive anymore, but really because we have this place in common: fourteen years to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, and now and then to return. Premarital counseling session here later this morning, then come back for real late in October. But oh yes, God willing. When you pass 82, as I'll have by then, God has to be willing. Cross fingers, knock wood, wishing you long years, and God willing.  At 7H we have BigSky to the south. Here it’s east, creek, marsh, river eastward to the edge of the world where the sky starts. Other side o...

Wickedly, a crispy chocolate chip cookie instead of Dark chocolate with my Black coffee this morning. WTH, turning round to grab a Dark square while my coffee perked, I noticed the cookie bag had climbed up to chat with my 86% chocolate bar. "Tempted but did not sin" does not mean me. In fact, sin is my favorite. Of which, from Franciscan Richard Rohr's meditation  this  morning, " In the United States there is never enough for health care, education, the arts, or basic infrastructure. The largest budget is always for war, bombs, and military gadgets. " Yes, this is us.  More sin and wicked, news reports death at 83 of Manuel Noriega, whom US supported as head of Panama, then sent 28,000 troops to roust him from office. Noriega took sanctuary and refuge in the Vatican embassy but, news reports, “US troops flushed him out by playing deafening pop and heavy metal music non-stop outside.” In my Navy time, my technical classification was major weapons s...

Decoration Day. As a Navy commander in uniform, I have, at the behest of my superiors, given Memorial Day speeches in quiet old Pennsylvania neighborhoods. In my Southern heritage, families were to decorate the graves of Confederate, and also Union, soldiers who had died in the 1861-1865 Civil War that so ravished our land and devastated us as a nation. Memory fails that might be verified or corrected by a visit to PCNH archives, but mine is Memorial Day parades moving north on Harrison Avenue; bringing up the end were always open touring cars conveying ancient veterans honored together, our Confederate in Gray uniforms, their Union veterans in Blue, cheered and applauded one and all. In my early childhood, that war was no farther back in history and sentiment than WW2 is today, family stories and feelings as keen, sharp, sometimes bitter. Were we right? We were on the other side of history, which Might writes. But no, we were not right. Thinking about current political correc...

Schools have graduated their Class of 2017 and most schools have begun summer vacation, at which point summer is declared and Adult Sunday School somewhat withers away until school reopens for fall semester. So, we are there. My options are continue on or give it a rest for the next three months. If I take a summer recess, I've nothing useful to occupy between eight o’clock worship service and ten-thirty service, so I choose to continue. From the eight o’clock service I stroll through the kitchen, pick up a cup of coffee and a cookie or slice of cake, and make my way out the brick road to the Library, minimally prepared with something, maybe one of the lectionary readings for the day, maybe something from the prayer book, or a bit of theology perhaps, maybe something from the day’s news or other current events, maybe something current about the Episcopal Church. Sorry, never a political topic. But I do bring something.  If a class member comes with a question or brings a t...

All things bright and beautiful: Saturday morning of Memorial Day Weekend and quite a few boats zipping across the Bay, mostly toward the Pass not Shell Island. A little more humid (75%) than max comfort, but if I miss this May morning enjoying 7H porch I’ll regret it July to September when it will be insufferable out here even early.  I’ve held off, but no longer can resist showing this Easter Bunny picture of my great-granddaughter Lillie. Just turned two, she has the exact same coloring and look as three other of my girls, and a hundred years from now who looks at family pictures of beloved little girls will not be able to tell Malinda, Tass, Kristen, Lillie. Caroline and Charlotte have more Jeremy’s coloring and hair.   Black and Dark about oh-seven-hundred hours, but still not awake. Breakfast now, chunky peanut butter on a cracker and another cup of black. And, ah, as of this morning my clouds are back, my summer morning clouds. Welcome, happy mornin...

Turns out the enormous ship standing off PCB was not to glide by 7H after all, she was making for East Terminal to load wood pulp. On our way from Holy Nativity Episcopal School graduation last evening we stopped by downtown marina and watched the ship, a real treat. It was a treat too, a mood-lifting event such that I always desperately need after sinking emotionally deep into graduation ceremonies and letting them take me away to wherever it is that I go, I’m never quite sure. Maybe my own graduation from Bay High spring 1953 and all that followed, the entire rest of my life. But more likely my own times after watching and loving my HNES graduates all their years at my school, as they leave never to return or be seen again. Though I always loved the “rising seniors” who arrived for eighth grade the following August, the halls and my room always ached for those who’d graduated the previous May and scattered to various high schools in Bay District. The thirteen-year-olds ...

Lovely morning, Thursday, 66.9° 57% here on 7H porch. Just inside, Linda’s television showing a large ship waiting offshore Panama City Beach. Looking forward to her entry, hoping she passes 7H when I can get a picture. Another grassfire last evening, this one in Oaks by the Bay Park next door. I was on 7H porch reading when Linda came out to view the panorama and started shouting, pointing. When I jumped up to look, it was a total, complete circle of fire, which would tell exactly where it started. Time I’d called 911 again and been told PCFD was on the scene or enroute, and grabbed the camera to snap, it had burned out to just the circumference. What this says is that neither this nor last Saturday’s fire were accidental after all, not some gardenia fool thumping a cigarette but a deranged arsonist. Quite worrisome.  Frankly, I never thought of control burning the high growth of grass on my Bayfront lot at the house, between MLP and the shoreline, but in the en...

Thunder, flight of pelicans close heading east, an osprey just flew by clutching a fish, breakfast for self or perhaps brood and mate. Lightning, streaks of lightning in the Gulf off BayPoint and Thomas Drive, all in all a beautiful morning out here on 7H porch. Loving it. Medium to large ship arriving in the pass, now directly across the Bay from me, in rain so heavy she has disappeared from sight. Driving rain on me now, but maybe I can snap a picture of the ship as she passes 7H in the near channel. Rain clearing through now, and, still heading east, she’s stopped in the far channel just short of the hairpin turn where she’ll come round and head west, then south just off 7H, and on to the Port. Swinging now, looks to be at anchor? Watch and see, “watchful waiting,” one of the “treatments” offered for prostate cancer. More pelicans. What will become of this cranial mass of all these thoughts, wonderings, wishings and intense feelings in my head when I’m gone? I might or mi...

God has gone up with a shout,  the Lord with the sound of the ram’s-horn. For some reason, possibly my book of the moment, love songs from the WWI era are on mind. This morning I listened to one bit of melancholia, this one played by a group of old men called, most appropriately for my stage of life, the dmentias https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61E_Vi0r3VI followed by Bing Crosby and Patti Page. Who besides me remembers Patti Page (1927-2013) - - dancing cheek to cheek songs on the jukebox. Would I go back? How, why, and what for? Of “going” my only interest at the moment might be Amtrak to Maine because the 2008 trip there missed BroadBay, a town of some five thousand now called Waldoboro, where Andreas Wäller settled from Germany in the 1700s. Other than that going or going back, I no thank you.  The above verse is why, on Ascension, we generally sing, say, or responsively read Psalm 47, “God has gone up with a shout.” Seemingly a bit divergent, Luke varyin...

Cloud and skywise, spring 2017 has been blah, with humidity that, even with pleasant temperature, hits with a blast when the porch door is slid open. I’ll take it anyway. Cause not yet determined, tv news reports of Saturday’s raging grassfire. I’m guessing someone in the pool area flicked a cigarette and beat a hasty retreat. Or a walker along the sand strip at the shoreline. That’s only my guess, and my only guess unless it was a resident from a porch who, if so, should be evicted permanently. The world is long changed, some for the better some not, but I remember that, when we moved to Japan in 1963 and were subjected to hours of briefings, both in Japanese language and Japanese culture, we were told that under Japan law, with all the paper and light wood construction in Japanese homes, fire was a threat and enormous fear and that anyone who started a fire in a neighborhood was subject to the death penalty. It was because fire in such neighborhoods could cause untold in...

Jesus said the first commandment is this: “Shema, Yisrael, Adonai Elehenu, Adonai echod,” Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second commandment is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” This is the Mind of Jesus Christ. I shall speak of Becoming Christ. You may be seated. +++++++++++++++ Genesis 1:1f, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved over the face of churning chaos. And God said “Let there be light,” and there was light. And whatever God said, it was so. If you have been to Athens, Greece, where St Paul was two thousand years ago this morning, you know the Areopagus both as Mars Hill, the huge crop of rock that juts out acros...

“Carroll, come look!” Linda said urgently from 7H porch, sticking her head in the door, “it’s a fire!” I closed the computer from fiddling with sermon notes and went outside, thinking to see a woods or house fire across the Bay, but it was straight down, blazing hugely at our feet, just below us, flames leaping and spreading in the growth of sea oats and other vegetation on the narrow strip of sand dune between Harbour Village and StAndrewsBay.  Directly below me, someone, a resident, I suppose, was futilely playing a garden hose just outside the ground floor gym windows. I rushed back inside, grabbed a phone and dialed 911. The operator switched me to the fire department, where whoever answered told me the fire department had been on the scene twenty minutes. Hanging up and going back, I saw that, indeed, a firehose was being played from just around the corner where this tower ends, round toward the swimming pool deck and, coming round our way, a second hose quickly drowning...

Overcast over 7H porch this morning, and to the east, south and west. Moon sailing high in and out of clouds, huge planet to the far left, northward, of the moon. These past several days, weeks, clouds are not as photogenic as earlier. No matter. Davis to Courtney: A relaxing and peaceful visit to Apalachicola yesterday. There are two hotels, motels, right on the river and we’ve only stayed at one, Apalachicola River Inn, which in our mind is the Rainbow. We stayed there a night or two when we first arrived in town from Pennsylvania the last week of July 1984. Told here before, we were on the first floor, which evidently had recently been flooded, as the carpet in our room was wall to wall soaking wet, and the first night we were there an alligator ate a cat in the motel parking lot. The night before, we had stayed in the lovely inn at Wakulla Springs. We were a family of three, Linda and I 48, Tass 12, and Trinity’s rectory was our home for the next fourteen years.  ...