Life is filled with all manner of challenges, isn’t it. From here in 7H on the Florida Gulf Coast, I keep an eye on an osprey nest in Boulder County Fairgrounds at Longmont, Colorado, where a mother and father osprey are carefully tending two hatchlings, feeding them bits of freshly caught trout from the adjacent pond. Come to notice, the life of a fish is challenging too: sometimes the fish are still flopping as the osprey clutches and tears bites from them.  Dawning here but it's still dark in Colorado, so I’ve not checked their nest this morning, but there’s one egg remaining, and being kept warm. However, a blizzard some weeks ago filled the nest with snow, and freezing temperatures down in the teens for way too long. Two eggs were lost, and I don’t know whether this last egg is viable. Other challenges, fighting off birds who swoop and attack. Owls and other predators who eat baby birds. Challenge in 7H. Linda is frustrated morning after morning going out onto the

Saturday is not my day for using my +Time blog to post some semblance of a Sunday School lesson, so this isn't it, and I'll come up with something different for tomorrow morning's blogpost. Nevertheless, here's our gospel reading for tomorrow. It's one of our most sacred stories, and I mean to comment on it. When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Judeans, Jesus came and  stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them  his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them agai n, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy  Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retaine d.” John 20:19-23 (NRSV) Note that the story is abo

Good morning, it's Friday the 29th, 77° 84% and sunny. Several boats out fishing in the Pass and ship channel, I'm no fisherman, what are they out there for, redfish, Spanish mackerel, bluefish, IDK. Growing up in the seafood business, cleaning and wrapping fish in a fish market from age 9 to 17, six days a week summers, Saturdays the school year, I had no interest in catching them too. Somewhat regretful now, but not very. Caught that shot looking north from sidewalk outside 7H at sunset last evening. Always browsing, always finding a car I want, the last one was a white Cadillac XLR with about 44,000 miles. This morning it's a 1983 BMW 320i with 5-speed stick and about 66,000 miles that I could hitchhike downstate, pick it up and drive it back to PC. If anyone's interested, I have a birthday coming up in September. No, really, you wouldn't even have to be bothered getting it to me. With downtown Minneapolis on fire I'm reminded of looking acros

Looking around the corner at turning 85 and no complaints. Robert is already there, how's it going, friend? okay, I pray! You been having breakfast at the new Waffle Shop where Jimmy's Drive-In used to be? A third of Americans have symptoms of clinical anxiety or clinical depression: not me, I'm good so far. My eyes work, my ears work, I have both hands, I can walk, I can think, write, speak. But the social and economic experience could weigh on most any active person. Yesterday at the Colorado osprey nest, one hatchling and two eggs. Father bird tearing off pieces of a fish and feeding the mother bird. Cute. Next time, I may be a bird. What breed? In Minnesota, four policemen fired for a botched arrest in which one of them killed the man. Firing is not sufficient, of course, charges. Coming. While I sympathize, and hurt, it's not possible for me to be really in there with complete understanding, because I'm not a black man in America. Nothing coul

Again, on the church calendar, this coming Sunday is the Day of Pentecost. This will be one of those Sundays when the principal reading will not be the gospel lesson. It will be from Acts: Acts 2:1-21 When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, M

It was thirty or thirty-five years ago and I don't remember much about it, but one Sunday I handed out pen and paper and asked folks in the congregation to answer the question "Who or what is the Holy Spirit to you?" Anonymous, unsigned, no names, and we collected the responses at the offertory. I recorded every response and published it with the worship bulletin the next Sunday. It may have been instead of a sermon on that Day of Pentecost, I don't recall. But I do remember their responses being better than anything I might have preached in a sermon about the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Who or What is the Holy Spirit? My theology professor at Lutheran seminary said the Holy Spirit is the love between Father and Son. God the Holy Spirit is the love between God the Father and God the Son. That was my first semester of seminary, and I was taken aback by his view. In fact, looking back at myself, I was quite naive and taken back by much. In further fact, to tell a b

Here are the lectionary Bible texts for the upcoming Sunday, May 31st, the Day of Pentecost.  We used to call it Whitsunday, meaning White Sunday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitsun white for the Holy Ghost, which makes no sense if the liturgical color is red for tongues of flame dancing on the heads of disciples who are on fire with the Holy Spirit.  Instead of Whitsunday or Whitsun Day, now we call it Pentecost, which is scriptural, and we count the Sundays for the rest of the Church year as Sundays after Pentecost, alternatively as Sunday in Ordinary Time.  However, that counting turns out to be somewhat confusing, because the Sundays after Pentecost also are designated by Proper number, the Propers, designated readings for the Sunday, being counted back from Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday next before Advent. The Number of the Sunday after Pentecost and the Number of the Proper for the Sunday neither match up nor remain the same from year to year. I'm for forget