Crows. Daytime they perch and make a living using the naked top limbs of several old dead trees as their headquarters. As evening comes they fly across our hotel to the thick brush of several trees bunched directly across from us, a safe haven on a long island of marsh grass between Scipio Creek and Apalachicola River.  My water-tank story is that when we moved to Apalachicola in 1984 the water-tank stood tall in the circle in front of Trinity Church. Summer of 1985 we had three hurricanes here. We left for the first one, an adventure for another blogpost. For the second we stayed in the rectory with lights off that night so the roving law enforcement wouldn't notice we were defying the mandatory evacuation order. I remember watching a bright spot off to the west of us during the worst of the storm as the eye moved ashore between here and Port St. Joe (or at least that's what I perceived). But the startling event was a tremendous crash, like an explosion nearby...

Just past four-fifteen, from our third floor porch it’s pitch black dark looking out on Scipio Creek. Occasional lightning flash in tall clouds to the east of me and every now and then distant thunder. Heading south, one boat has sped by as I watched, going fishing maybe, for livelihood or fun.  Otherwise, it’s quiet. Now and then maybe some traffic sounds way south, but we can’t see Gorrie Bridge from this room, neither the bridge nor the causeway between Apalachicola and EastPoint. From our bedroom in Trinity Church rectory those years, traffic, truck gears shifting going up or coming down the bridge, was the main thing we heard. Although emergency vehicles speeding by on Avenue E, sirens screaming, did come down the middle of our bed, we were that close upon Highway 98. So far in life, I’ve managed to abide by a life’s rule I set for myself in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania the spring of 1984 upon accepting the call to Trinity, Apalachicola: never again, never ever...

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Princess Sophie of Austria-Hungary were assassinated by a nineteen year old Serb nationalist, giving governments an excuse to ignite the outbreak of the First World War.  We humans love war, and our governments seize upon any reason to go for it, with enthusiastic support by their populaces. A tragedy of war is the topsy-turvy-ness of it that those who suffer and die mostly are innocent late teenage males. A rule should be that only government officials go to the front, them and their offspring.  Once I believed that only mothers and grandmothers should be top government executives, thinking females more likely to value the lives of a nation’s children, but I don’t believe that anymore: the ladies are as confrontational as we are, or more so. That day, on an official visit that reportedly also celebrated their fourteenth wedding anniversary, FF and Sophie were riding in a 1910 Gräf & Stift phaeton,...

Add caption This picture of cars on the beach, not PCB for two reasons, one is that PCB was bare, no buildings at the time, another is that the cars are on a hard beach of beige sand, not on our sugar white sand, maybe it's Daytona, IDK; because of the newest cars shown, the picture is no later than maybe summer 1939 in my opinion, was posted on FB by a dear friend who knows me as something besides holy man or naval officer, with a challenge. I'll see what I can do.  As my blogposts are never put up as forums for conversation, discussion or argument, I often "react" in FB terms with like or love, but never or seldom respond; but, no mind, anyone who wishes is welcome to challenge my identifications. I'd like to know how to label the cars with numbers so I could then be clear in my list below, but I don't know how to do that. So here's my go at it anyway. Front row left to right. 1939 Plymouth four door convertible probably advertised as a phaet...

First, foremost and forever for Fire Controlman First Class Gary Rehm, hero of USS Fitzgerald, who according to the article below, made twenty trips into the flooding crew berthing compartment to rescue shipmates before himself being caught below when the watertight hatch was secured to save the ship, leaving him trapped to drown with six other sailors. Rehm has proved himself the best that we can be. This story keeps growing, and I'm feeling that it will never leave my heart. The story confounds understanding, maybe it takes a destroyer sailor to hurt so. Said before, I've slept many nights snuggled up against the cool skin of the ship, lulled to sleep by the sound of the ocean rushing by a fraction of an inch away, knowing every man on the bridge, and with total confidence that I was safe, never the least thought of risk. It was Trust, unconditional Trust. I never thought about it at the time, but looking back nearly sixty years, it defined Trust. Someone or someones bet...

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is its equal in every way: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. But we have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves, we are not truly sorry and we do not humbly repent. Romans 6:1, our lesson today: Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? μὴ γένοιτο! By no means! God forbid! Let it not be so! How can we who died to sin go on living in sin? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Might walk in newness of life. Might walk...

To go up early this afternoon, like it or lump it, today's post the text of this morning's sermon. Meantime, though I've somehow managed to delete it, a friend sent me a picture of one of my all time favorite cars, a 1949 Cadillac Series 62 sedan,  so it's an early moment to reminisce about cars I loved and lusted.  Posted here before, one day in the late 1940s, as I sat in a chair of Ralph Sorrentino's Barber Shop on downtown Harrison Avenue, a man pulled up and stopped outside to show a new car. He was a salesman at Lloyd Pontiac Cadillac, and the car was a brand new Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special sedan. From barber chairs we gawked, and someone asked him the price of the car. "Fifty hundred fifty dollars," he shouted and we gawked a moment longer as he drove on off. Flashy and unaffordably expensive, it was a honey, a beauty, shiny black with white sidewall tires. Except for the practiced or obsessed eye, the Cadillacs for 1948 and 1...

5 In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. 7 But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years. 8 Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. 10 Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. 11 Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer...