Saints & Signs

Outside on 7H porch, easily the clearest night in a million years, Orion in my face, and Sirius, brightest being in our sky, patiently, brilliantly, obediently below the Hunter. A tug rumblingly, chug chuggingly pushing her barge past and round the bend to head north toward Hathaway Bridge and on I suppose, unless they’re stopping at the Port west terminal, but more likely they’re making along the intracoastal waterway, will pass Mary Esther later this morning. I’m adding tugboat captain back to that list of next life possibilities. 

Again the weather, almost as autumnal as this time yesterday, 64° and 80%. Weather online says wind at 5 mph, but up here at Level Seven it’s blowing steady higher than that.  

Anu Garg this morning with hagiology, easily recognizable as word and holy, he says study of saints, the saints. Who else has saints? Anyway then, Hagia Sophia, Saint Sophia, Holy Sophia cathedral mosque in Constantinople now Istanbul, Turkey. And also, Τρισάγιον is the “trice holy” that may be sung to open the liturgy in place of the Gloria in excelsis or the Kyrie eleison. Looks like “trice hagion” to me with an expelled aitch and a hard gee, but I once heard Marion Hatchett drawl “try-sajun” and it’s been said that if Marion said it that’s it. Marion sounded like Alabama, or was it Mississippi?

Thursday, today, a mental work day, thought for sermon at Trinity, Apalachicola this coming Sunday. After walk tomorrow morning, we’re driving over for a long weekend of wedding rehearsal Friday evening, supper with friends from back when, wedding Saturday evening, staying overnight and supply priest Sunday morning, then back home to 7H. 

I could tell, had a strong sense, realization, on that first arrival afternoon in July 1984, that I was about to become, and would forever only be, just one more name in a long list of priests there, and so it has become and is. The tug of StAndrews and of Cove School and of the Bay, I understand; but there’s something about Trinity Church that claims the heart and won’t let go. An owning that goes both ways, it’s been with me since I was, probably, nine years old, but can’t describe. There’s another word for Anu Garg: ineffable.

Speaking of whom, his

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Life is mostly froth and bubble, / Two things stand like stone, / Kindness in another's trouble, / Courage in your own. -Adam Lindsay Gordon, poet (19 Oct 1833-1870)

Holy God, 

Holy and Mighty, 

Holy Immortal One, 

     have mercy upon us. 

DThos+