Thursday morning on StAndrewsBay

Linda's birthday is tomorrow, then we'll be the same age until I turn 85 in September. This seems to happen for a couple of months almost every year about this time. I'll tell my age, WTH, it's my excuse for almost everything, but her age is her business. Do what? In the old normal we'd go out for dinner. She likes lobster, so while the preference might be a lobster shack on the Maine coast or that fancy place in Newport, Rhode Island where we had lobster late summer 1957, we'd go out to Grand Marlin or Captain Anderson's. But life is new normal and we do not go in restaurants, so we stopped by Tarpon Dock Seafood and bought four spiny lobsters to cook here at 7H. I bought four to make sure there'd be enough for Linda to have one, seeing it's her birthday and that.

Never've had a spiny lobster. My preference is a five- or six-pounder, a nutcracker to break open the claws, and a bowl of lemon-butter; after my appetizer of raw littleneck or cherrystone clams.

That's our Collect for the Day below, church's prayer for this coming Sunday. These things are nice to pray and feel we've done our thing, both praying the liturgy as we are bound to do and try to beat the Baptists to Morrison's Cafeteria, and praying God to grant that we do something that we d-well ought to but don't have sense enough to do ourselves without trying to palm it off on God and then wondering, if indeed we ever bother giving it a second thought at all, why God doesn't do it. Even though we pray it at this time every year it still doesn't get done. Well, I guess we'll need to ask Him again next year, jeepers.

So what is it that we ought to do that we're praying God to give us grace to accomplish?

Exactly that thought came to mind as John played the Prelude in church last Sunday morning, a setting of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. [Yes, in the church we daren't sing "Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war" or "Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross" as the national situation demands, but we can do the Battle Hymn, which in my youth was contemned as a Yankee song and if we heard the Battle Hymn, we'd rise up like the unconsciously racist fools we were, shout-singing Dixie to drown out the Battle Hymn]. And as John played the music the lyrics were going through my mind, especially the gotcha verse:

In the beauty of the lilies

Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom

That transfigures you and me;

As He died to make men holy,

Let us die to make men free;

While God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

That's what the protests are all about, you know, to make men free. Every black American wants and has the same right as I do to be just like me. To be what I am. To have my opportunities. To be interchangeable with me in every way. To walk downtown at night without being stopped and asked, "Boy, what are you doing here?" To relax when his son leaves the house to go jogging, without the agony of knowing there may be a phone call or a knock at the door. Yes, as Kristin says, "the promise". They simply want to claim the promise of America. If we don't get it, Jesus Christ, God help us. Whatever it costs for every black American to know that he's as safe in America as I know I am safe in America, that's the cost, amen, let it be so. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, or to hell with the lot of us.

RSF&PTL

W+

Lectionary for July 12: Proper 10 Year A

The Collect

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.