This is our OT lesson for tomorrow, Lent 1A. My rattle-on about it was prep for the Adult Sunday School class, but we may do something else. Old Testament Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” … Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you w...

Sometimes I read them, more often Not , the poem-a-days sitting there every morning waiting for me to open my email. Not , because only from time to time does one say anything to me or for me; usually Nothing, or more often they were trying to be kind and publish someone's rubbish. So the odds are negative, and generally I don't even bother opening. But this one, the title did, then the poem left me surprised  A Moment Alone A. Van Jordan Sycorax As if someone blew against the back of my neck, I writhed up, becoming a wind myself,  and I flowed out the window of my bedroom. Maybe I also emitted a moan over the croaking  of the frogs that night. Then I raised my arms  to the clouds, rooting my feet deep in the soil.  A stretch, I called it.  Now—pure nature in the night,  too sway-of-the-trees wise to worry about men— I opened my nightgown but offered nothing  to anyone. This is for me, I said aloud to the ...

For all the way we see ourselves as gracious and kind and loving and generous and Christlike, in dealing with ourselves in our inner conflicts, which is where we really prove ourselves to the watching world, we show ourselves quite other.  For decades the Episcopal Church and our key rival, who, with their conservative colleagues from the Anglican Church of Canada,  have settled themselves as ACNA, the Anglican Church in North America, have been wracked with bitterness, fights over property, and lawsuits. Feeling was so intense that the Presiding Bishop at the time, I think it was Edmond Browning, called it "hate". It has been the most imaginable example of Satan at work within.  Even yet we hardly deign to speak, and the next Presiding Bishop was, to my uncertain recollection, adamant that no Episcopal jurisdiction, diocese or parish, accommodate the "enemy" with a property disposition, lease, gift, sale, even though former Episcopal church bu...

Some may duh, some may understand my sense these days of having lived through the end of Weimar as the people - - who because we are so diverse are not a People in the true sense of Reich even though being served the kool-aid and insatiably swilling it (though some, perhaps enough to carry the victory again, self-identify as Volk) - - frenziedly transition into the new Realm. And factions of would be Opposition comically disintegrate into impotent irrelevance. ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω and leave it at that. Talking to myself, remember, some of us do that, especially as we age into irrelevance. The musings or ravings, but not rantings because there's no emotion left in it, of an old man who obviously is leaving port. Speaking of which, my intent for this morning was to copy and paste an essay by another retired octogenarial Episcopal priest writing pathetically, somewhere between desperate and resigned, from a retirement community that he up and front admitted ...

Tuesday 20200225 0542CST. Maybe later, but not blogging this morning because it's my day to go with the lab slip for my 2xyearly blood draw prep to next week's 2xyearly visit to my doctor's office. Everything seems to be 2xyearly. Next week also dentist and audio lab.  After fasting lab visit, to office to continue prep for Confirmation Classes that will be 9:15 to 10:15 three Sunday mornings, March 8, 15, 22. We will slightly modify our regular Adult Sunday School Class to incorporate a half hour of Confirmation discussion with a half hour of our regular SS, which mostly but not always is Bible study and discussion. The invitation & welcome is out in our parish: as well as regular SS folks, anyone who'd like to learn more about us as Christians, and anyone who might like to be confirmed by the bishop when he comes on Sunday, May 10th, which is Mothers' Day.  Between lab visit and office, breakfast, but it has to be relatively light, because I still have t...

Thank God, American Churches Are Dying  (WSJ Opinion essay: scroll down, way down, no really, WAY down, I did not write that headline , it was a Wall Street Journal contributor in Indiana) .  However, this first part IS by me, Papa, Dad, Fr Tom, Uncle Bubba, Commander Weller, Carroll. Sensationalist attention-grabbing headline aside, the WSJ essay is quite perceptive and apt. It is no secret that mainline denominational churches are declining in membership and have been declining for decades, maybe since not long after WW2 and the nineteen-fifties, in part as societies moved into modern and postmodern realizations and thinking. The WSJ article, copy & paste below, is interesting and, I thought, important. Related (though I do not scroll Facebook, Linda does), is something she recently shared with me from Episcopalians On Facebook - -  https://www.facebook.com/groups/Episcopalians/  - - which is both a discussion forum and also a place where one may ask f...

Our life with Jesus helps us mine the power of stories, visions, memories, and dreams. This old Bible story stirs my own mountaintop experiences and memories, and I hope it may do the same for you.  A friend from The Old Time pointed out, which you and I can ratify, that “the radical change of a community from disaster is a devastating experience requiring long recovery and it is never the same - -  a mass experience of PTSD for those who had to endure and who are still enduring”. She mentioned floods and fires and storms; and remembered a visit to Alaska in 2004 where everyone had their story of experiencing the big earthquake, 1964, forty years earlier - - which itself stirred my own memory of that earthquake: we lived in Yokohama, Japan at the time, the tsunami warning and fear. And she mused about where all our apocalyptic stories of the wrath of God come from. Writing this week to comment on my blogpost about the early morning fog, she told me a vision of her own ...

Jesus took with him Peter, James and John and led them up a high mountain apart to witness his Transfiguration with Moses and Elijah, and the thundering voice, God from the cloud, “This is my beloved Son: listen to him”. Peter, James and John, but Andrew: what about Andrew? It’s not MY question and I never have an answer for anything anyway; but a question was “How did they know it was Moses and Elijah?” Thirty-five years ago I heard Bishop Charles Duvall explain that Moses was holding two tablets of stone, and Elijah was singing “Swing low, sweet chariot”, but that is not my question and I am far too serious about scripture to give such a light answer!  My question is different. In all four gospels, Jesus’ first two disciples were Peter and Andrew. In fact, in John’s gospel, Andrew is First Disciple. In Mark, Matthew and Luke, the Synoptics, the first disciples Jesus called were Peter and Andrew, James and John. So reading today's gospel story, my question is "What about ...