New Year's Eve and much will be written about what a terrible year 2019 was and how evil mankind has become (okay humanity or humankind, but it still has the word man tucked subtly away inside it, but whatever), and indeed it was a tough year for many and I'm ready to move on into a new decade even though I know full well the numbering is a purely human construct and It won't really be 2020, it'll be whatever. Maybe the Jewish calendar is better, 5780, but that also is of human doing. We could start with 13 billion 7 hundred thousand something I guess, but it would still be from our human perspective, wouldn't it. I mean, what notions and notations of Time are other creatures in our Milky Way and in the other 200 billion galaxies perceiving, not to mention those in other universes of the multiverse. Whoever can't conceive of this, your God is too small. Sure enough though, Time has gotten the best of us, starting on me in September 1935 and then the unexpec...

It'll be a toss-up today, how to relax, to which the sense of entitlement begins beneath the soles of my feet and stretches into the depths of my soul, higher than the tallest angel standing outside the tomb in the Gospel according to Peter.  Black coffee earliest, ambivalently we saw Joe off home to North Carolina, good and better best visit in recent memory but he's long years on his own, headed for sixty, and entitled to his own Time & Space. Walk with Robert and too much for breakfast, my cell phone clocked 1.7 miles so let it suffice.    Now back home in 7H and the toss-ups. The day is clear, cool a seasonally pleasant 62° though bit breezy up here. May take my new telescope out on the porch and scan the horizon for ships at sea to the south and whatever's on and beyond Thomas Drive to the west of me. May sit here in my cell withdrawn from all that is. May blog. May brood over what might have been or be grateful for what is instead. May read my book, cu...

Sermon or homily in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on the First Sunday after Christmas Day, December 29, 2019, the Rev Tom Weller. Gospel and texts, Genesis 1:1f and John 1:1-18. In the beginning was the Word: thy strong Word didst cleave the darkness. I shall speak of the conversation between God and creation. You may be seated. בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים beresheet baRa Elohim  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. וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים  wa-Ru-ach Elohim And the Spirit of God  moved over churning chaos.  וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, יְהִי  way-yo-mer Elohim - - yə·hî  And God said “Let there be”. And all that God SAID, it was so. Way-yo-mer. And Said. Spoke. Logos. Word. Has Spoken. Speaking. Eternally Speaks. Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. In t...

Six o'clock, and as dark, silent and still as In The Beginning.  Christmas past, Christmas present, Christmas yet to come. Christmas is still present, for Florida, temperate, seasonably warm. I could enjoy this mug of Black outside on the porch, waiting for light and for the clouds to clear. This is a good Christmas Present. For us, the most recent Christmas Past was in exile, Hurrication Exile in Walton County, far from home, as far from home as the heart can bear. And cold. I remember seeing Mercury low in the morning sky, from the east-facing balcony of our kataluma. I recall walking up to the fifth floor roof to look out over the sea. I remember bitter cold and biting wind and hoping that this too would pass, as it did, but of course, along with it the passing of a significant part of life itself. Christmas yet to come, what? In another life, beloved parishioner and friend Miss Pearl used to say, "This is my last time. I won't be here next year", said it pitif...

This is the fourth time. Three times today have I started this blogpost. And three times come back to continue it and found it had erased itself. In, not a rage, not a snit, but simple surrender, I’ve said to hell with it, deciding not to blog today, when today was this morning. Closed the filthy beast down, and gone off to sip my Black and eat an antepenultimate serving of my magical oyster dressing. Then another mug of Black and a part of a link of Tallahassee sausage. Finally another mug of Black and a tiny mincemeat pie. Then ultimately the decision to revert to what I’ve not done in nearly a decade, well it was May 2011 wasn’t it, i.e., draft what I want to say on Word before I copy and paste into my +Time blog. It begins - - Christmas is over and we are heading for the New Year. No, Christmas is NOT over, Advent ended with Christmas Eve at 2400 hours Dec24, and Christmas began at 0000 hours Dec25 and goes until January 6th, Epiphany. Not only is Christmas not ove...

Merry, Happy if that's your tradition, Christmas, with prayers and all good wishes for the New Year.  Things happen, including to each of us personally, as we move along through life, and that includes "Firsts" that we'd just as soon not have come down on us. Our First Christmas without a loved one can be grievous beyond imagining, and the idea of going into the New Year without him/her. I have those Firsts to look back on, though as yet not so painful as for many people I know and care about who lost loved ones since Christmas dawned this time last year. In our branch of Christianity we liturgically honor them and our love for them on All Saints Day, November 1 each year; but the holidays are the hardest, and each First holiday seems unbearable. My deacon friend, in saying grace, blessing before meal, always remembers before God, and jogging our memories and consciences, those loved by God who have nothing to eat as we sit down to feast. Just ...

Over long years of life, we've lived many places and known many wonderful people. One who's especially in mind this morning was Mary Virginia, MVR, in Apalachicola, for whom Christmas was at its most seasonal and exciting when you came out of Christmas Eve "midnight mass" into the chill, foggy damp. Best when shivery chill as you headed to friends' homes for the after-church Christmas Eve parties. Trinity Church rectory is right next door to the church, and we hosted grand parties like that once or twice, Christmas Eve 1984 and 1985, until realizing that we were cutting into longstanding Apalachicola tradition of parties at certain people's homes. Julia always, and I think Wesley and Ann's.  MVR died nearly two years ago in her mid-nineties and I assisted with her funeral, maybe preached the homily. After retiring as a senior officer at the bank, she took on parish treasurer and worked it tenaciously for years to come. She was a dear friend, and fro...

ugh, argh. 7H is our first time owning a condo, and much as we love living here in this beautiful bit of creation, as from HMichael forward, we're finding out that owning a condo is not the same as either renting, which we haven't done in many decades although come to think of it the rectory experience was a tenant/landlord situation, or owning our own land and house. What we own here is space inside someone's building, from the flooring up, and the ceiling paint down, and the wall paint out and around, and the window glass in. Just the space and, I suppose, the air in here. It's a box and all I own is the space inside, and I can put whatever I want in here, but I don't own the box itself, just the space. It's just now coming home as an interesting concept. For the second time since the hurricane, water has come in during heavy rainstorm. It comes in under the vinyl flooring, spreads under the vinyl flooring, floods out where the vinyl flooring stops such as i...

Someone said Christianity is not a religion at all, but a way of life. And I agree, he’s right, but only half right. Christianity IS a religion that, because of our stories about Jesus, demands a certain way of life of those who claim him as Lord and Savior. This is true of most any religion. Christianity is a religion of stories. And they are not stories that mandate dogma of literalist inerrancy, nor stories for non-Christians to tear apart and show how foolish we are to love them so, but beloved stories of our relationship with God, as every religion has its stories. Defining orthodox Christian theology as Father incomprehensible, Son incomprehensible, and Holy Spirit incomprehensible*, Christianity goes on to insist they are not three incomprehensibles but one incomprehensible, yet claims a three-person God who is Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier - - where our Advent stories are about the Redeemer who both Has come and Will come again. It’s incomprehensible, our holy histo...

Dozen years past mandatory retirement age and still doing part of what the vocation calls most parish priests to do. No pastoral care, in part because the emotions become so deeply invested and at this age I don't need the worry, agony about others' pain, and "heart attacks". One is preaching from time to time, including this morning. As usual, keeping a promise to a dear friend, whatever today's sermon turns out to be, and I never know for certain until on the way back up the aisle from Gospel to pulpit, will be posted here later, probably about noon. On my preaching Sundays I usually only post the sermon or homily because late Saturday and early Sunday is when I check out my sermon notes for my final chance to see what is all wrong; sometimes having to start from scratch. But the latest Christmas post in Charles LaFond's  The Daily Sip kept me thinking. Awake too. Awake and thinking. I enjoy his writing, and appreciate it as much as I enjoy it, and re...

Read, I may hate television, but I like to read, sometimes peculiar books, some I bought myself, some given to me by loved ones and friends. Jan & Feb 2017 during my sabbatical of intense shock and horror (oh, it floats instantly to the surface: in blogging recently about a typeface, I neglected to say a top best thing about Trebuchet is & its ampersand, which, if I correctly remember having read some years ago, was once the twenty-sixth letter of our twenty-seven letter alphabet, thus singing in conclusion "W X Y & Z". No, seriously), never mind why the sabbatical, ( https://www.grammarly.com/blog/nevermind-or-never-mind/ ), it's none of your gardenia business,  I read several books about holy fools, including Laurus , a Russian yurodivy, and about WW1, and have since read such a variety of books that I can't keep up. Where Rivers Change Direction , by Mark Spragg, who was raised on a dude ranch in Wyoming, was an interesting genre of...