choose or just start typing

Soundproofing between rooms at 7H seems as good as the solid tongue-in-groove wood for walls and ceilings at The Old Place. In its space, which is the laundry room and pantry, my magic coffeemaker’s grinding and compression seems deafeningly loud, but isn’t heard in other rooms even with the door open. And sounds from outside are hardly ever heard here, although yesterday’s Sunday afternoon nap was jolted to semiconsciousness by loud claps of thunder. 

To blog not to diary or journal, and to avoid mosaic whining, but exhaustion continues from the 9/07-21/2017 trial. Continues if slowly abating.

In my middle years, Sunday afternoons often were occupied enthusiastically by examining the lectionary readings for the Sunday a week away and starting sermon thoughts and notes already. No longer, although by my fault, by my own fault, by my own grievous fault, I allowed October Sundays to become so jammed that yesterday I did manage to look and see what comes next so as to open the mind's windows:

Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

Philippians 2:1-13

Matthew 21:23-32

The OT reading, ever my favorite, is yet more whining, last Sunday for food, next Sunday for water, poor Moses, he just can't win one. Philippians 2, the Christ hymn Paul may have appropriated from the early church, has possibilities if I can avoid the perennial fight between doctrine and example. As for the gospel, over the decades of lectionary trienniallism I’ve dealt homiletically with every gospel so many times that I work to escape yet another match where I struggle with the Word and lose. Perhaps, we’ll see:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God 

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave, 

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself 

and became obedient to the point of death-- 

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name 

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend, 

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord, 

to the glory of God the Father. 

DThos+ in +Time+

Art: Moses Striking the Rock and Bringing Forth the Water. Marc Chagall, 1887-1985