me only

A +Time blogpost need not be of interest or concern to anyone but me and, to face it, not even that. Today’s interests me only.

57°F 60% cloudless blue sky, Saturday morning for the book, books. May this moment come to mind in JulAugSep when the day is insufferable, amen.

Arrived by USPS this week, Broad Bay Pioneers (18th Century German-Speaking Settlers of Present Day Waldoboro, Maine) by Whitaker & Horlacher, Picton Press, Rockport, Maine, 1998, a brand new copy. Great-grandson of Johann Wäller, grandson of Lorenz Wäller, son of Hans H Wäller and Maria Magdalena Weber (RC?!), Andreas Weller (age 30) (1721-1769), wife Anna Maria Frölich with daughters Catharina Elisabetha Weller (5) and Maria Catharina Weller (3) arrived in Broad Bay from Oppertzau (Hamm, Germany) in October 1752 aboard the vessel St. Andrew (pp.65, 515). They were settled with 38 acres on the west side of the Medomak River (p.93) in the Lower Falls area (p.160). The occupation of Andrew Weller is listed as cordwainer (p.517 et.al). Andrew and Anna Maria had six more children, born in Broad Bay (p.517),

of whom my ancestor was George Weller, born 1758 Broad Bay, buried 12 Feb 1825 Trinity Church, Boston. He married Abigail Copeland in Trinity Church on 10 March 1789. From there I must check ancestry.com and the notebook prepared by my sister Gina, who is the competent family genealogist.   

What do I want? Return to Maine and visit Broad Bay (Waldoboro). Visit Hamm, Germany, explore online. 

Predawn darkness lends an opportunity for searching, including self. Personally, spiritually, theologically. This week in online meditations by Fr. Richard Rohr (RC Franciscan) I found a far more satisfactory road less travelled than the incredible transactional atonement doctrine (for more thought see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02055a.htm) commonly held. Fr. Rohr said** “The common Christian reading of the Bible is that Jesus ‘died for our sins’ — either to pay a debt to the devil (common in the first millennium) or to pay a debt to God the Father (proposed by Anselm of Canterbury, 1033-1109). Theologians later developed a ‘substitutionary atonement theory’ — the strange idea that before God could love us God needed and demanded Jesus to be a blood sacrifice to ‘atone’ for our sin. As a result, our theology became more transactional than transformational,” a theology I find incredible, untenable and, frankly repugnant. Rohr's meditations this week've offered me a better way.

This week exploring Kafka and chagrined but not surprised to come across that θώς means jackal. 

Finally, the obtuse thoughtlessness, unforgivable meanness, irredeemable selfishness and disgusting greed of all involved in AHA, and wondering what the alphabet is worth defending about a people who afford our budget and national debt but do not wish to afford decent medical care for the most needy at the bottom of our socioeconomy, ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω.

DThos+ somewhere 

** Richard Rohr, "Love, Not Atonement" meditation for Thursday, May 4, 2017, online