December 3rd coming up is the First Sunday in Advent, the first season of the church year, always the four Sundays before Christmas. Advent itself, the word, is from Latin, means “coming” as in “he is coming,” and it refers to the coming of Christ, which can be appreciated in at least three ways: Jesus’ first coming at Bethlehem, which all through Advent we anticipate celebrating at Christmas. Jesus coming into our hearts and minds and lives as we work through our baptismal journey of “becoming Christ,” returning to the divine image in which God created us in the Beginning. Jesus’ second coming which Paul anticipates in his writings and which Jesus himself promises in the gospels, and which our tradition anticipates in the Nicene Creed and the Baptismal Creed. Our Sunday readings during Advent are different. Advent 1 readings are apocalyptic, anticipating the End of Time. Advent 2 readings, John the Baptist appears as Jesus’ precursor. Advent 3 John the Baptist is about ...

In a world worse, worsening to worst, unbalanced by bigotry, hatred, indifference, certainty, the news this morning. Ethnic, racial, nationalist snobbery of the British press; remarks of a clueless American president who not only can’t resist seeing self but cannot help seeing and styling self as the center of all that is and actually self believing that himself is so (who shall not be named, where are you when we desperately most need you?); unspeakable atrocity in Egypt, Burma, the US, meanness that discredits all religion for all time: in the West specifically, you cannot be a Christian and be selfish, greedy, hate, in thought, word or deed, nor save yourself by walking down the aisle to accept keeping X in XMas and be as sure for heaven as if you were already there. Yet, what about me: loving Jesus while hating bigots makes myself a bigot, doesn’t it, evil within me, oblivious self-assured innocence of the damned, who have been loved but have left some unloved. What, who, whom did...

2017112702dark when I went out on 7H porch to see why the tug was standing by, sure enough, two tugs, ship just rounding the hairpin turn. 49°F it is, 57% wind at 5 mph, dropping to 46° by daylight, looking good. On the Gutenberg Project where I read General Grant’s autobiography, last night I found A Christmas Carol and am doing that as my opening read for Advent. Per the author’s usual, Dickens is much more than any film of it. In fact, closely aligned with yesterday’s gospel from Matthew, for “what you have not done to one of the least of these …” may God have mercy upon your soul. Except that for Jacob Marley his time for mercy, chesed , lovingkindness, is past where his chain is heavy, his wailing cry hideous in the bitter wind of eternity.  I’m only just finished Stave One, cold night filled with phantoms moaning incoherently, helplessly. Day and week ahead, walk, meet, TAFB at some point, lunch Wednesday. RevFr Ward Clark dead yesterday, funeral Thursda...

For the last Sunday of the Church Year, we have and hear ominous end-time hints that probably don’t touch most people. What I find is that an octogenarian hears such things more personally relevant than teens (who pay no attention whatsoever, don’t even hear it, minds are on other things entirely, namely the girl sitting two pews ahead BTDT) or twenty-somethings whose lives are just shifting into second gear.  What does Paul think, believe? With the Any Moment Second Coming Stay Awake Keep Watch experientially on pause, Paul had somewhat committed himself with his letter to the Thessalonians, so I reckon he’s stuck with it, developing, improving and clarifying himself, that Christ returning from death is only the beginning of what’s to come, that he’ll bring all the faithful dead with him and so forth and so on. Paul gives me second thought because he didn’t have a telescope is my shorthand as I contemplate his theology.  Yesterday’s football games came out, Bl...

There are a lot, plethora is a pretentious but apt word, of stories and any number of films about tomorrow morning’s gospel reading for the Feast of Christ the King Sunday (UCC better christens it Reign of Christ). I read one early, Tolstoy’s short story “Where Love Is, God Is” English translation instantly available online*. I read several stories too early this morning, some longer, some shorter. One is not disappointed in anticipating a bit of schmaltz, but no matter; and doubtless some mawkishness to be heard from some pulpits, but again no matter.  Though I would never call Tolstoy** nostalgic , the celebrated historical novels were an early genre of gripping serial soap opera that still does not disappoint. Still and all, the fewer tears milked from congregations by mushy stories tomorrow morning, the better. Lots grabs my attention from the gospel. One thought is that Matthew may have assembled it from more than one tradition. Others are more interesting to ...

Several “daily news update” sort of emails arrive early and wait for me each morning. Usually and intentionally I look at them later, after I’ve written and published my blogpost for the day. But this morning the unusual and unintended happened: just as happened yesterday, again this morning FaceBook would not process my until-yesterday-daily-post of my link, and with it first picture, to my daily PlusTime blogpost. A bit frustrated, I fooled with it awhile, fiddled and fussed, and then quit. Just qyit, not gave up , just alphabet quit. I mean, WTH do I care about FaceBook, it’s not central to any part of my Being and if I told my grandfather, “Pop, oh no, FaceBook wouldn’t take my post this morning,” guess what Pop would say. So qyitting, I opened my mail. A long CNN daily with “five things” I need to get up to speed and out the door. Nevermind, later maybe. Worse, NYT has started something similar, and though I scroll down it, there’s no doubt in my mind that if I click and...

A friend, a fellow clergyman, is an extraordinarily compassionate man who, when he “says the blessing,” at a meal gathering, closes praying that we remember those who have nothing to eat today, tonight. This always so touches me that it causes me to pause in a state that I can only describe as momentarily stunned, perhaps because it brings the, what? euphoria? of the instant occasion back down to earthy reality.  His petition comes to mind this morning of Thanksgiving Day as I scroll down glancing through the one-liners on each news email. Those still devastated by the hurricanes, by the wildfires, by the mass shootings and this the first “holiday marker” to get past enroute back to life that can never be the same again. Add them to the innumerable wrongs, evil we did, have done, do to indigenous peoples since white men set foot on the continent and began our ravenously greedy rampage. I don’t mean to blog a downer on, along with The Fourth, our most holy national holiday,...

This is a different sort of day, isn’t it. Yes it was Friday afternoon in Dallas, but in Yokohama it was Saturday morning. I am drinking coffee, phone rings, Linda goes to answer it, Malinda and Jody are watching Japanese cartoon hero Tetsujin on the b&w television.  Linda picks up the phone, it’s Bev Hatchett across the cul-de-sac. Linda says to me, “Kennedy’s been shot.” I jump up and head for the radio to turn it on, stop mid-way and head back to turn off the TV, back to turn on AFR&TS radio. Dead, President Kennedy is dead, VP Lyndon Johnson sworn in as president by a Texas judge and friend whom he summoned to AirForceOne before taking off to return to WashDC. LBJ will win a term of his own only to be driven from office by mob power: "Hey, hey, LBJ, ... ."American history changes in an instant. What comes to mind that morning? My feelings April 1945, news coming over the radio that FDR, president since 1932 and now in his fourth term, is dead of cerebral hem...

doing what I love Unless my mind goes out for recess, this could wander, a stroll in the dark, but which is better than standing alone far from home, beside a highway in the dark. Breakfast, yes, though on first arising, black & dark, one sqyare of TJ’s 73%, bitter but not too bitter, while perusing news from online sites, it’s not good, the news is never good, if news were good nobody would read it, we like to read bad news, we don’t like bad news, but we like to read bad news.  May come back and read more about Germany, an emerging political issue, possibly crisis, that the PM can’t form a ruling majority, Germany and Germans showing their true colors, extreme right of hatred. Jiminy, what am I saying, we have it here too; as well as of human bigotry, it’s born of fear, every facet of fear, those who are different from us are a threat to all that we are and know, and we want them gone even though there are fewer of us earthlings on this earth than there are galaxie...

43°F out there, no worries, jacket, scarf and pullover hat are ready for this morning’s walk in the Cove. If I resumed my 10,000 steps a day religion, regimen, that helped me lose 47 pounds in 2007-2008, I’d be a healthier man and live longer. I do shake a decent martini though, prefer shaker not stirrer to get it coldest and more water, but Tanqueray is too perfumed for my taste, and less M&R to freeze on the ice.  Go Gators, a surprise and delight Saturday, but OMG here we go with the Thanksgiving weekend game that’s second only to Tide v. Tigers for virulence. Go Gators. Go Blue. Speaking of … Monday morning headline from NYC, Chicago and WashDC, Charles Manson has died, is dead. Someone wrote that his prosecutor called him “a metaphor for evil.” Everybody loves a scandal, especially a sex scandal, as Roy Moore is finding out for having used his position of authority and power with adolescent girls. Donald somebody. Now Wes Goodman, XnRt Ohio legislator vitr...