Many years ago - - more or less on arrival in Apalachicola to be the Episcopal priest at Trinity Church, and that was my first regular full time job in charge of a church after my ordinations, and where I first had regrets about not having done this all my life, as up until the age of 19 I had intended for my life, instead of just finally getting around to it the second half of my life entering seminary on my 45th birthday - - I shed the "traditional" American workplace feelings and expressions of TGIF and GDIM. From ordination into my vocation, from my first day at seminary actually, three years earlier, I realized with an inside burst of joy and relief, that I had finally got to where all my growing up years I knew that I was meant to be.  There in Apalachicola, Sunday became the climax of my week, a strong positive feeling building from Monday, actually from Sunday afternoon after my High Priestly Nap, that there was never again any sense of a lowpoint or weekly drud...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was WITH God, and the Word WAS God; the Word was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through the Word, and without the Word was not anything made that was made. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Our gospel reading for the First Sunday after Christmas Day is always this prologue to the Gospel according to John, “In the beginning was the Word,” a foundation of our Christian theology. Laying that foundation here in worship is a sound and solid basis for beginning the New Year. The Gospel according to John - - whoever wrote this gospel, we do not know, all four canonical gospels are anonymous - - opens his story by carrying Jesus all the way back to beresheet, the beginning of God’s creating work as told in Genesis One:  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth; and the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved over the face ...

Saturday morning breakfast of black coffee and a mince pie while waiting for Joe. Much to my joy, he did not go yesterday, but stayed another day, and in half an hour or less is leaving to drive home to Winston-Salem, NC. An engineer, Joe is prompt and precise. He usually comes to see us twice a year, and when his departure day comes round, he wakes at five o'clock, gets ready, has a bite of breakfast, I think this morning his mom is making him a fried egg sandwich, and leaves almost precisely at six o'clock. With normal traffic, his drive takes nine and a half to ten hours and he calls us upon arrival.  We have loved him dearly, and Joe has been a thoughtful, kind and loving son all his life.  After Joe left, I came back upstairs and made me a hobbit's traditional second breakfast, three eggs over medium on a slice of sprouted whole wheat bread, light smear of Tabasco. One of many favorites. Today, furosixty and counting. Hurrication: in that, as life well knows, ...

There is a sense, in life as 2018 has rendered it for me, or to me, of having disappeared. Somehow, from existence, if indeed I/we do and it isn't a dream as I look back and think it well may have been, or someone or something's imagination, into whatever physical of us returns to dust as promised; and whatever mental of us either evaporates into the ether of the universe or simply goes out like a turned off lightbulb or snuffed candle as I think least unlikely; and whatever spiritual of us, if indeed there is such, and the mental part of me is never certain of anything, reunites, as some theologian has it and if that is so, with whoever or whatever Creator, relating obliquely to Jenson's examination phrasing, "Who or What is God?" Who has been to this part of Earth, America, the Gulf Coast of the Florida Panhandle, knows that it is not real. Simply crossing a bridge, rounding a curve, and turning left across traffic at the first light, one enters a Twilight ...

With coffee this morning, half a maple glazed donut from Donut Hole across US98 outside the window where I'm sitting to type. Jeremy and Charlotte went over and got a box of mixed donuts just before they left yesterday, including two of my favorites so far, blueberry cake donut and a maple glazed donut. Their regular glazed aren't up to Krispy Kreme's glazed, but then nothing is. Sometimes, John Hutt brings those to church for coffee time. However, KK was closed down by Hurricane Michael and was still closed the last time I looked while driving on 23rd Street. I used to take six or eight large boxes of mixed KK donuts to Wednesday morning chapel at HNES for the students. But sometimes they were from the donut place across the street from Bay High.   A memory from ten and more years ago: sticking my head in the mathisfunandgood classroom and hearing a student shout, "Father Tom! What's for snack today?" Life's best years. Best of all, I realized it a...

December 26, Boxing Day in England, when traditionally the monarch packs up boxes of food (presumably left over from yesterday's Christmas feast?) and delivers the boxes to poor people on the street.  Also anniversary of that horrendous tsunami in the Indian Ocean that cost over 220,000 lives. At the time, there were actually those who said God did it to kill and punish gay people vacationing in Thailand. It's one's choice, and who but the most wicked of men would choose such an evil divinity?! 'tis the Day after Christmas and, again, all through the house, not a creature is stirring not even a mouse, only my fingers tapping on this device. There's dawn as seen from the little place where Inlet Beach meets Rosemary Beach. We, the Church that is, are looking next to the Baptism of Christ; then to January 6th, assigned as Epiphany, the Twelfth Day of Christmas. The Epiphany alternately  depends on whether one is eastern or western Christian. Eastern Orthod...

Merry Christmas again and again forever! Angels and shepherds and sheep, father & little mother, young people reading and older people singing, kings with gifts as a star pushes through the crowd to climb a ladder behind the babe in the manger. Children's choir singing me to tears. You be an angel and I'll be a star.  This is the Day even if it's so early Christmas morning that not a creature is stirring not even a mouse. For customs, I've already watched A Christmas Story about Ralphie and his bb gun, which growing up I also had several, and the disgusting major award, and several glimpses of his father's 1937 Oldsmobile Six touring sedan.  Set in the 1940s when I grew up, everything in the movie is totally credible to me. I've not checked to see what year it is, if the author meant it to be a particular year; but in the scene of Flick's tongue stuck to the flag pole, the police and fire department show up. The police car is a 1948 Chevrolet...

It's pretty quiet out there right now, 3:13 AM, Monday, December 24, 2018, here where Inlet Beach becomes Rosemary Beach, Florida. No cars on the highways, neither US98 nor 30A. Dark out, I'll have to step outside to see how, no I don't, it's 56° and mostly cloudy per cellphone weather icon. A Christmas Eve to remember, to store away in a crevice of the memory, good, it's all good, Life Is Good. Merry Christmas! Just arriving from Tallahassee, TJCC were unloading their car when we drove up from church yesterday. Joe arrived from Winston Salem about three o'clock. Kris came from PCB soon after four, and someone said, "Everybody's here." Malinda, Kristen, Ray, Britany, Lilly, Joe, Tass, Jeremy, Caroline, Charlotte, Linda, me (Papa, Dad, Carroll, nobody in family calls me Tom). Everybody but Nicholas. Well, everyone still living, add Christmases-past with all your own loved ones in your heart and mind. Chef Ray had been working more than a da...

Gospel from Luke 1.  Luke 1:39-45(46-55) In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee! Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen. You may be seated. Mer...

From our bed we raised the shade and watched Venus rise this morning, moving in what from Earth appears to be its planetary arc in our sky, but is actually Venus in the plane of its orbit around the sun, appearing to move, as actually Earth in the plane of our own planetary orbit round the sun turns in daily rotation. Venus doesn't move in an arc any more than the Sun moves around Earth, it just appears so. The same is true of many Truths. We are now watching whether we can see Mercury and Jupiter in conjunction, and yes, we do see the two very close together, low on the horizon. They are not close at all, are they, it's just how they appear from Earth this morning. Not Jupiter, Saturn or Mars, which move through our night in the same arc effect as we're watching Venus do just now, but from Earth, that's as high above the horizon as Mercury ever gets for us to see before being extinguished by the rising or setting Sun.  Our bedroom here where Inlet Beach ...

One day earlier this week Linda went out and bought us a counter top toaster-oven, for us a daily-use appliance at 7H that we'd not had in our several kitchens for the two plus months of hurrication. Once the toaster-oven appeared, it stirred in me a taste for bread, real bread, Italian, French, something real. Publix bakes and sells real bread in the bakery, and Linda came "home" with about half a dozen various loaves of their real bread. It's not foam like American bread, it's real, solid European-style bread, and you may have to slice it yourself, which is a good thing. Since the toaster-oven came to enjoy hurrication with us, my breakfasts have been a thick slice of, I started with the Italian, bread topped with slices of a startlingly good cheese from Trader Joe's that Tass brought and now I'm out of it and hope she may bring another pkg of it when they arrive at The Pointe while we are at church Sunday morning.  Thick slice of real bread, slices ...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Britany, Ray and Lilly went over to Destin and bought a live tree, which reminded me that our family custom was, the Sunday before Christmas, put saw and axe in the car trunk, load everybody inside and head out across Hathaway Bridge into the piney woods that, except for the dozen or so houses and other buildings including the Old Dutch Inn at the Y, that stood between Hathaway Bridge and Phillips Inlet Bridge, turn off into one of those piney-wooded areas and drive the winding sandy trails slowly, slowly, slower to assess tree by tree. Stop at first one then another to see if it was perfectly round or had a flat side and drive on; even if it was perfect, we could never cut the first tree we saw, or the second or half-dozenth because no matter how good they were there was always surely a better, best one waiting.  Eventually we found a tree, seems to me that Gina liking it was always the deciding factor, and by then I didn't c...