"Welcome, happy morning!" age to age shall say. After last night's terrific thunderstorm, our weather this morning looks to be perfect for the Florida Gulf Coast, 77° 93% Panama City Beach, humidity could be higher, my weather map says it's 100% in Santa Rosa - - - - so we are taking up the rector's appreciated suggestion, in a little while heading southeast along US98 in my big silver V8 that's a car of my heart, for the day, coffee and later lunch in Apalachicola, deeply, lifelong and forever a place of my heart.  We will not be there in time for church, but then would not likely go today in any event, because I think it's a special day sending off their interim priest; and regardless of my personality's wish to be invisible, when we show up at Trinity we are distracting. Otherwise, Apalachicola is my place to hid3. T 

This morning I'm going to suit myself, use a font with a lower case "g" and lower case "l" that I like, and let my mind wander a bit. If it turns out too long, the good news is that you don't have to read it. Sixty-two years ago today Linda and I were married in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, where we and our families had already been members two years, coming over as founders from StAndrews Episcopal Church, where we grew up and started dating. We married soon after I graduated from UnivFlorida. Actually, I pressed Linda into marrying right then because I knew that once I sailed away into Navy life, her mother would resume her campaign to find Linda a nice Alabama boy to marry, Roll Tide, preferably a young doctor from Birmingham or a young lawyer or banker! Which Linda denies, but I was there, watching. Father David Damon officiated our wedding and was a beloved friend before, then, and forever after. Within ten days of our wedding, I left for U...

Browsing early and opening email, I crossed the Facebook page of Trinity, Apalachicola and appreciated this post, which I lifted to add here. It hits me just right, because my ongoing campaign is against the religious certitude that is so common in every religion and that has been the cause of religious wars throughout human history, actually even including within Christianity itself, confusing Faith - - which is defined scripturally - - confusing Faith with certainty, with knowledge. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) Faith is belief, faith is trust, faith is hope. Faith is hope in the face of uncertainty. A danger of being raised in a religion from birth is that we grow up holding it as absolute truth and everyone else's religion, even other Christian denominations, as contemptibly false. "We believe - - " opens our Creed. It does not begin "We know - - ".  Back to my little mantra, Just be...

With the Boulder County Fairgrounds osprey cam, as I've said, the slide at the bottom allows looking not only at what's happening now, but of backing it up and watching them for the past hours. The mother takes off during the night and goes wherever she will, stays gone long as she wishes, it's part of what happens once the chicks are this big. The father osprey arrives clutching a fish, I'm no expert but it looks like a speckled trout. The father fed the nearest chick a bit, then the mother came over and took charge.  These photos aren't necessarily in any order.  The older chick is going wild with his new wings and seems eager to take to the air. He will first lift off the nest for a few days, then he will fledge, actually fly about a bit. That's coming up soon, and I'll be watching. An early hour or so I watched wildlife videos online. BBC and National Geographic have excellent. One, of flying foxes, they're bats...

The red mask is still around somewhere, at least I think so, but returning from Japan fifty-some years ago, we brought a green mask and a red one, having seen noh and kabuki theater there. The red mask is fierce, a demon. Not sure, but seems to me the green mask was happy, and I could be wearing it.  Times may have changed, but the Japanese tradition was that all actors were male, and the mask and costume signed whether the character was a man or a woman.  We are still storm refugees eight and a half months on, though at least back from South Walton into Bay County at PCB, driving once or twice a week Across The Bridge into Panama City, and trying to maintain the clown face refrain of optimism  and how much better it's all going to be afterward (I mean, yes, maybe so, but never again the same and I loved it exactly as it was, just as Panama City and I grew up and into my old age together ), I continue to try and work out in my mind WTH happened....

It isn't so this morning, though they are seen together from time to time, moon setting with Jupiter, caught in their lovers' tryst. Not realizing we know* what they've been up to in the past, and are even onto their future plans. More likely, they don't care any more than the chameleon couple we spied on the deck from our window table at Sweet Magnolia last Friday noon.  Of all nature, only we humans are scandalized by these things. Perspective: it's all in how we look at it. June 25, Malinda's birthday is six months out from Christmas past and six months from Christmas yet to come, by which time we hope to be back in 7H and safely beyond Hurricane Season, which has new meaning for us. Birthday dinner out early evening, then we have elegant desserts for after, two ice creams and three kinds of cake, four counting the caramel cake we ordered from Sweet Magnolia and hope to pick up late morning. And many more. Haze in the air: dust from the Sahara ...

Hello darkness, my old friend
 I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping
 Left its seeds while I was sleeping
 And the vision that was planted in my brain
      still remains
 Within the sound - - of silence Whether sung by Simon & Garfunkel or by “Disturbed”, nothing else comes so forcefully to mind as I read and hear Elijah the prophet with his Lord present not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in the sound of silence.  Only once in my life has that, God’s silence, been broken into. A story I’ve told before, always reluctantly because, to be honest, it puts my sanity on the line, in public view. I used to read bedtime stories to my Kristen when she was very small. including Bible stories that my mother had read to me when I was a little boy. And after the story we’d have a moment for questions Kristen might have. The night I have in mind, after a story of Adam and Eve, or maybe it was Abraham and Sa...

Tomorrow morning, our Old Testament lesson is from I Kings 19, the story of Elijah encountering God in the sound of silence, which of course calls many things to mind, including memories tucked in far away crevices of the mind. And songs, a song. Couple of vocal groups but one particular song. Then opening email yesterday I was fascinated to see a NYT opinion piece about the wonder of silence (like The New Yorker magazine and The Atlantic, NYT has marvelous journalism without having to fawn over the political coverage), "The Land Where the Internet Ends" in which a journalist talks about a visit to Green Bank, West Virginia, which is within The National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000 square mile area in the mountains, where total quiet can be experienced, and even lived. I copy and pasted the article below (scroll down, and keep scrolling, never mind the wide blank spaces or that some photos may have picked up twice). Anyone who doesn't subscribe to NYT and those other two...