Sunday, it's Sunday morning, so as clergy I should be doing something religious, from or about the Bible or that, eh? Instead, I scroll down my email inbox, glom onto and read a NYT article on procrastination. Thus perhaps committing in itself an act of procrastination of something else that I know I should be doing? But maybe not, all my bills are paid, I've gotten round to paying them as soon as they arrive instead of setting them aside for a few weeks such that I always find one or more late or within a day or so of going delinquent. Against old days when I was rushing to the postoffice to get my return date stamped before the midnight deadlind, nowadays I get up my tax stuff as soon as possible and get it to the CPA well ahead. What did I procrastinate this morning while reading the article on procrastination? Or what do I procrastinate as a way of life and that leaves me feeling negative about myself - - For long years, childhood raising and Navy years, I was up earl...

This morning is the annual meeting of our condo association's owners, it's a peaceful group and Linda enjoys going. There's lots to contemplate this year, with major repairs going on from the hurricane and only a few residents able to return to living in their units. It may be yet spring, but I'm thinking summer before we're back in 7H. Comparatively minor bother though, which is quite clear if one drives through Callaway and Millville where, I'm guessing, many folks did not have insurance and are left in the despair of impossibilities. Facebook likes to do it to me with reminders of what was, this morning it's a picture I took of The Old Place on a spring day like this eight or ten years ago. No regrets because it was best, I sold it with overwhelming grief in 2014, just as Mom and Pop sold it in 1923 and moved to Georgia to escape the sea where they had lost Alfred. No regrets because two people don't need a thirteen room house and 7H suited us i...

Some future civilization, perhaps such as George R. Stewart's 1949 postapocalyptic novel "Earth Abides" promises hopefully, will restart "In the beginning" with no electronic devices for children to flatten their intelligence, imagination, focus and interest outside themselves, having instead nature, the great outdoors to learn and play; none of the mind-destruct "toys" that parents, to save their own sanity, give their children to keep them occupied and from being a bother; perhaps even, praise God, no television.  Natürlich, no laptops, internet or blogs either, so there. What did I do as a bored boy? To begin with, if I had said "I'm bored" it would have cost me the go-out-and-pick-a-switch-striped and blistered skin off my bottom. I gardenia sure didn't stay inside the house watching tv; if I was inside I was reluctantly practicing the piano and watching the clock to make sure I didn't sit there one second more than thirt...

Having a T hink. With the shade halfway up, sitting on the edge of the bed sipping coffee, watching the planet rise slowly as the earth turns against it, rather swiftly actually, and it will soon enough again disappear into the sunrise. The US98 traffic from no to little as it picks up to meet Thursday in what will be a busy place.  Yesterday the three of us were out for half-price early supper at the Perfect Pig down 30A. Driving under the canopy of trees through Rosemary Beach, spring break is in full bloom, not the college crowd which can be so ugly, but families, children from grade through high school on bicycles in a safe place, teens from all over falling smitten in love with whom they never knew existed until this week, BTDT, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, is there really still falling head over heels in love for the week, or do they just hang out, IDK, no longer live there except in sometime memories where life has nothing sweeter than its springtime. But th...

Bombshell shmomshell, for heaven's sake, Jussie Smollett, his case is the prosecutors' responsibility and they've handled it, let it go and send him home, he's pathetic.  The pine tree outside our condo window is a prime suspect in the ongoingness of this allergy affliction that never hit me all my growing up years but now gives me fits every spring and fall, as now, boxes of Kleenex all over the condo, why me. Why not. Our gospel for the upcoming Sunday, March 31 is the parable of the prodigal son (scroll down). Always like to scout around the web and find art about the subject, generally but not always a heartrending, tearjerking scene of the reunion of indulgent father and wastrel son. But not always: some art shows the son squandering his inheritance on the beautiful ladies some shows him among the swine, which is my choice this time around. We read it on cycle every three years. The Prodigal Son, Jan Sanders vanHemessen, 1536, Web Gallery of...

The hurricane ruined the building and structural engineers probably already have determined whether it has to be pulled down. I hope not, but Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, what a mess. And First Presbyterian directly across the street, once the loveliest church in town. I officiated any number of elegant weddings there. Looking at similar damage to other churches with high brick walls, plus OnePresby had the roof torn off, and has sat unattended for months. Thinking their church was struggling already, I'm sad for those folks. Picture above. Mike McKenzie sent me last evening, I don't see a date, but maybe 1910 to 1920? When was Panama Grammar finished**, and I can't tell whether the picture has motorcars as well as horse-drawn carriages. An era of self-righteous moralizing that everyone else must be compelled to abide by one's own certainties. We have it today on subjects, especially here in the so-called Bible Belt of the South. My view?...

What to do when life hits us with surprises, deal with it, face it and deal with it. Not the storm and after, which for us has been and continues a relatively minor inconvenience of being displaced and dealing with things - - Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure - - but about the wrench thrown in the gears of our life expectations that our eldest, daughter, a highly intelligent RN, would see to it we were properly cared for in our extreme old age when/if we came to that. But tables turn in life and it's precisely opposite. Two octo's anxious that she be okay, which she is not. Many families face this, more generally between aging spouses as we may yet, but there's no reason, theological or otherwise, why we should not, why our lives should not have taken this turn; instead of child becoming parent as anticipated, we a...

All my growing up life with her, my mother suffered from allergies, hay fever and asthma, sometimes even life threateningly. And honestly, it was so much part of mama that I grew up thinking of allergies and hay fever as a woman's affliction. How ridiculous, but experiential makes truth, doesn't it. And now in old age, my own experience of it in season, which is now, I don't know what's growing out there, but a couple days ago I made the mistake of sitting outside on he porch, balcony, to enjoy the spring day and oversee traffic for a couple of hours, coming in only because the day had receded into too cool for my comfort. That may or must have done it: allergic reaction of terrible cold-like proportions. No fever, I don't think I have a cold, but all the same head, nasal stuff, sneeze, cough, it drives me alphabet crazy and compels taking medicine I hate: someone's delicious raspberry flavored syrup, one tiny cup every four hours, max six in 24. But at least ...

“Moshe, Moshe! You’ve come at last, Hallelujah! Every day I waited for you! I’m DELIGHTED to see you! But, hey! this is Holy Ground, take off ya’ shoes and make ya’self comfortable! We have lots to talk about!”  You may be seated . In my life, I have failed to understand and appreciate many things in their Time, when they seem to challenge tradition as I've known it, perhaps especially in the church. That New Hampshire bishop, for instance. Bishop Spong of Newark, prayer book revision. And today's Moses and the Burning Bush always brings to mind the Reimagining God movement I encountered in the late 1980s and early 1990s as an element of feminist theology. Thirty-five or so years ago, a new member of my parish, an earnest young woman in her early twenties, she and her mother had just moved to Apalachicola, I don’t remember why (everyone has reasons for settling in Apalach, for me it was childhood memories, church, oysters, mullet and ultimately the lovingkindnes...

Our lesson for Sunday is still the good old Sunday School bible story of Moses and the Burning Bush (scroll down) and, God help me, I'm still fixated on it. Just a thing or two this morning. Looking at clipart for the story, I was taken with one because it surprised me that the bush is so much smaller than I imagine it to have been in the mind of whoever first told the story. Well, tradition says it was Moses himself and I reckon that's as good as anybody, since we have no idea who the original human author was, J-writer, E-writer, JE, P (no, not P) who knows, I don't and neither do you.  Most of the clipart renditions have a towering bush and a cowering Moses. One I really liked is magnificent stain-glass window style, but it has a sign on it: "The Burning Bush."  Well, duh - -. I selected the other one because of the surprisingly small bush, and Moses has just taken off his sandals, and Moses looks more curious than awed. God and Moses didn't get alo...

Yesterday after my "walk", for about two hours outside on the balcony - this condo has three balconies, the one off our br looks out on the point where US98 and 30A meet, about a mile west of Philips Inlet Bridge, across 98 under the water tower at a strip mall that has a couple of nice restaurants, and across 30A at Shades, where I've gotten a seafood platter for six dollars extra converted to all oysters and lose the fish and shrimp - I sat in the budding but coolish springtime and watched the cars go by.  And realized that all I needed to be fully retired is one of those tall porch chairs and set it close to the balcony rail where I can wave at cars. We were here all winter long and traffic was light, but now, spring break season, traffic is a steady flow and enough cars to make waving a new vocation. Linda will have to bring my breakfast and lunch out here though, so no drivers get their feelings hurt that I wasn't out there to wave. In fact, it just occurs t...

Spot on, right on this morning, with Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr meditating about the inner imperatives that support and challenge me in this second half of my life. Twenty years growing up, twenty years out of water as a Navy officer, forty years in a life to which I knew a vocation before I was ten years old and entertained for another ten years before opting to rebel and ditching it. But ten to forty, thirty years hooked and played on the line before being landed. Two greatest life moments, my first day of seminary in early fall 1980, and the mid-summer 1984 day we arrived in Apalachicola, both times, overwhelming feelings of home at last, home at last, thank God almighty, home at last. Fr. Richard's meditation which, along with a couple other things, I read at three o'clock this morning before going back to bed, is copy and pasted below, which his site graciously permits. Funny, interesting, good, apt and helpful that he cuts life in two pieces, because it fits ex...

See, this is what I'm currently doing to make hurrication other than a waste of Time that bears no fruit and cannot be recovered, not wanting to speak it, but over and again learning enough that I can read a line, sound out a word, recognize a name,  אֶהְיֶה  or  יְהוָה  the tetragrammaton, say, that I had to explain in my general ordination exam at Virginia seminary all those years ago. Forty is a good scriptural number, so say forty years.  Why are there 27, I thought you said there are 22? Well, it's because there're five finals for word-ending use, K, M, N, P, and TS. Still have trouble with the letters that are just sticks with a little something on top, so'm concentrating on those. Also, 22 is misleading, because there are tiny marks, dots and stuff, underneath or over or beside as sound, vowel marks, for pronunciation. This is a good week to have been doing this drill, because Sunday's OT lesson is the part of Exodus 3 when Moses unfortunately e...

Blog being by me for me, I owe me no apology for the Monday post being later than I prefer, though an explanation is a common courtesy: too busy identifying a sixties Ford Falcon and a London Taxi in response to inquiries. London Cab and London Taxi are not the same, and I read that London Taxi is owned by Geely, the same Chinese company that owns Swedish automaker Volvo Cars. This sort of internationalism, expanding to total economic interdependence, is good for peace. My last Buick was from Germany, for example. Another Buick model is imported from China. Lots of Japanese brand Toyota cars are made in America. This laptop computer was assembled in China. Breakfast: breakfast egg casserole left over from yesterday's brunch at church for the bishop's visit. Drive into PC to cast vote for new, 8' sliding glass doors at HV, check mail, and take car to shop for check engine light. Door change is a no-brainer. One must be patient with a nearly fourteen-year-old car. I...


 The Poem-A-Day email was titled "Remembering W S Merwin", who died day before yesterday. Merwin was once Poet Laureate of the United States. He named this poem "Variation on a Theme" and it appeals to me for reasons that could only belong to an old man and do not bear explaining outside my own mind and Being. 
Thank you my life long afternoon late in this spring that has no age my window above the river for the woman you led me to when it was time at last the words coming to me out of mid-air that carried me through the clear day and come even now to find me for old friends and echoes of them those mistakes only I could make homesickness that guides the plovers from somewhere they had loved before they knew they loved it to somewhere they had loved before they saw it thank you good body hand and eye and the places and moments known only to me revisiting once more complete just as they are and the morning stars I have seen and the dogs wh...