We don't read much from Lamentations, a set of five poems grieving the destruction of Jerusalem and carrying away the city's population into captivity and Babylonian Exile. This coming Sunday we do read a few verses from the first poem. The link below is to the Mechon Mamre Bible page for Lamentations chapter 1, where one can view its acrostic composition, which, in any language but Hebrew, is invisible and cannot be heard. One also can listen as it's chanted by a Hebrew cantor and perceive the sounds as it progresses through the 22 letters of the Hebrew alefbet.  Lamentations 1:1-6 How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!  How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!  She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal.  She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her;  all her friends have dealt treacher...

Luther, sixteenth century Reformation founder Martin Luther, preached, and we have of his, English translations and audio readings of at least two sermons on “Lazarus and the Rich Man”. A graduate of Gettysburg Lutheran seminary, I heard Luther reverently quoted almost without fail in every student and faculty sermon preached while I was there; and it was never past tense “Luther said”, it was always “Luther SAYS” a Real Presence in the congregation. And never pretentious, Luther’s preaching is down to earth for everyone in the pew. When I hear Luther, I stop and listen - - as this week in reading and hearing his two sermons on this gospel from Luke 16, that Luther pityingly calls “The Rich Man and Poor Lazarus”. He always says “armer Lazarus”, Poor Lazarus. We take this gospel as a Parable; but, picking up on the fact that Luke does not SAY it’s a parable, Luther says it MAY be a parable and you may take it that way if you wish, but Luther chooses to take it literally as recall...

Last chat on the Boulder Fairgrounds Osprey Cam was nine days ago. The male osprey, among the chatters affectionately called Dad, was last seen on cam Sunday, Sep 15, then he was off on his migration south to wherever he goes. Could be but not necessarily the same place Mom osprey goes, ospreys seem to mate for life, but seems to apply only during mating and nesting season that lasts from early spring into the end of summer and early fall. During the off season they're on their own as individuals, probably off somewhere with winter sweethearts. The chatters are a close-knit group of folks watching the nest from all over. Including like me, although I'm not one of the chatters, I just check in during the season, sometimes several times a day.  Looking this morning, it's still dark in Longmont, Boulder County, Colorado, but the nest is lighted, and it looks like the piece of blue plastic that was there all this season is gone. I don't necessarily think the park...

First and most noticeable effect on nature after HMichael was the tens or scores or hundreds of thousands of tall pine trees folded over, trunks snapped off quarter or third the way up and in a given forest all prostrating themselves in the same direction as if sacrificially slain while in the act of bowing in obeisance to whatever lord or god. For the most part those have been cleared away. Some vestiges, on unused land, and the other day I noticed a mass of broken and leaning pines still completely cluttering the far east end of Massalina Bayou. Aside, another effect of HMichael is that Massalina Bayou now can be seen from Cove Boulevard, so it's not different neighborhoods at all. Early morning to the Eye Clinic, both of us. I should go every year, I suppose, but most often it's two or three years between my visits. For eight or ten years I've had reading glasses, package of 3 for $11, on a string around my neck - - problem being that the readers have matching l...

To be sure, already I've said this more than once, but with three hurricanes in the Atlantic and a yellow X in the Gulf of Mexico it drifts across the mind again. That the first weekend of November 1993, driving across Tallahassee in a light drizzle, on my way to pick up Nicholas at school when the bell rang, hurrying because I was running late, I ass-you-me-d that the pickup truck in front of me would go on across the yellow light and so would I follow, when suddenly he stopped and, slamming on brakes, on the wet pavement I skidded into the truck and saw the hood of my car fold up in my face and my car's transmission come up into the seat beside me. It made me skittish, nervous about driving for the next several years, and a lesson from which I'm still both recovering and benefitting over a quarter-century later. Just so, three hurricanes curving north and east far out in the ocean is scant relief, the fact they are there, and worse that Oct...

Breakfast: Mug of black from my magic machine, End slice Good Seeds bread (I like dark heavy bread filled with bakery floor sweepings) cut into four strips and toasted with Slice TJs uncommonly good cheddar (I like cheese I can taste) on each strip, Bowl steel-cut oatmeal cooked thick with Bowl large Michigan blueberries cooked in (I like large blueberries more flavorful than tiny Maine blueberries, but the no sugar added blueberry pie at Golden Corral is superb) and Soupspoon Wisconsin dark maple syrup (I prefer strong tasting dark maple syrup and this is like maple molasses about industrial Grade C) stirred in.  Early wakeup was mug black and two tiny squares mint dark chocolate from Scotland. POD is Staff Meeting at church, during which HV's contract electricians are scheduled to come and replace a smoke detector that went missing when 7H was gutted after HMichael and reconnect the FIRE speaker system that rouses the whole shooting match in the wee hours wh...

Everyone who knows the evening order of Compline (BCP127) will recognize as familiar and welcome, our responsive psalm for the upcoming Sunday, Sept 29, Proper 21C: Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16 1 You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, 2 will say to the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust." 3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; 4 he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 5 You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, 6 or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday. 14 Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. 15 When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. 16 With long life I will satisfy them, and show them...

This - - looking at other, looser, translations - - is quite straigntforward, and much better than struggling with it and ending up unsure and frustrated. Here's the confounding gospel lesson for Sunday, September 22. Luke 16:1-13 (NRSV) Parable of the dishonest manager Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, `What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.' Then the manager said to himself, `What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He answered, `A h...

There are folks, people, friends who actually like me, I do not know why. In our Summary of the Law "the second is this: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" gives me cringe, pause, and puzzle because I do not, cannot, never have loved myself, and can't imagine such; so my work is to love neighbor as the first and great commandment, "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength", that's the best I can do, love neighbor as God and leave me out of it. Why me?  When I was a Navy LTJG I was promoted to LT a year early, what was called "from below the zone" of promotion candidates, I alone of dozens or scores of officers. I didn't know why, have never understood why. Soon after that in the Navy, I was given my choice of Stanford, Harvard or the University of Michigan for graduate school. They assigned me choice billets for promotion potential, some called it the "flag...

Opening the overnight-charged computer and going online mornings, my first thing tapping may be browser to Google then "n" that brings up a list so I can tap news to see what's happening. Because US news sites, especially two "main" news sites, are so obsessively biased I scroll down to the bottom and tap "world news" that then adds BBC to the list. I don't give a rat's ax if you see BBC as also biased, it gives me news instead of disgust and a bellyache, and I'm interested in Israel's election, which both of the "main" American news networks ignore online this morning in order to continue their usual hate, so not go there, go to BBC. I'm not a Jew and Israel is not my second (or first) home, but having lived through WW2 here in America, and from here closely watching newsreels about Germany during the war and Allied liberation of German concentration camps, and reading much about that my childhood era then and s...