The Good Book Club: here's an introduction by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhsqefBjSXU&feature=youtu.be The Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church specify the Bible translations that we may read in our liturgical worship. Below is the current authorization by General Convention. Most Episcopal parishes seem to be using the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), published 1990, an update of the 1952 Revised Standard Version, in the King James Version principle of word for word translation from the Hebrew and Greek. Canon 2: Of Translations of the Bible Sec. 1. The Lessons prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer shall be read from the translation of the Holy Scriptures commonly known as the King James or Authorized Version (which is the historic Bible of this Church) together with the Marginal Readings authorized for use by the General Convention of 1901; or from one of the three translations known as Revised Versions, including the Englis...

Here's a short little "prep course" video about the Gospel according to Mark, our study topic for the Epiphany 2021 Good Book Club.  It's pretty basic, which is a good thing. I enjoyed it, have watched it several times, and am sending it to our Sunday School class.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGHqu9-DtXk If you watch it, you will enjoy it, and, like me, you will learn something! Tom+

Return of The Good Book Club, which we had several years ago! It's Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μᾶρκον, good message per Mark. The Gospel according to Mark, passage by passage from beginning to end. Sponsored by Forward Movement, it's meant as an Epiphany Season project to turn on the lightbulb over our heads about Mark - - as in "read Mark, learn, enjoy, and inwardly digest". It'll begin this Friday, January 1, 2021 and finish Shrove Tuesday, February 16, 2021, the day before Ash Wednesday the first day of Lent.  Each morning there'll be a daily reading (see the calendar below). Holy Nativity's contact person, I'll work it via plusmoretime.blogspot.com , my +Time blog. Each morning there will be  a Good Book Club post to +Time, with the day's passage from Mark and some commentary, either mine or someone else's. The daily link to the blogpost will be posted on my Facebook page as usual, and, assuming I can work out how to do it, posted on our parish's F...

  This morning contemplating Holy Ground and searching for a quotation, I again came across this   “Earth's crammed with heaven,  And every common bush afire with God,  But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” by E B Browning, a profundity that sees us as we are, The rest. Another perspective on checking our blind spots, isn't it.  Snapped from the window at the east end of our Level 7 sidewalk just outside my Beck Door here at 7H, the annual extravaganza of lights in Oaks by the Bay Park from about Thanksgiving to about New Years. Every year I say I'm going to photograph it from across the street, but it hasn't happened, I've not done it. So maybe Next Year? There'll be one for some and not for some, Next Year that is. What to do while waiting to see. Instead of anticipating, Live and Love every Moment as Gift, because the future is not a gift, and when it comes it may not have my name on it anyway. Or yours. T+...

  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. And RUACH, the Spirit, Wind, Breath of God moved over the waters.  And God SAID יְהִ֣י ye-HI, “BE” “Let there BE” and it was SO. Tying it to that Genesis creation story, we might consider this morning’s gospel as much a Nativity story as Luke 2 that we read every Christmas Eve. But it is Κατά Ιωάννην,  According to John  and, where Luke tells a bedtime story for and about children - - the shepherds were children, the angels a children’s choir, and of course the Babe in the Manager of Bethlehem, the story According to John is for theologians. And it is no Nativity, it’s a proclamation that Christ the WORD is from all eternity: never began, never ends, forever IS. That the One we know on earth as Jesus of Nazareth was in fact the incarnation, someone said "the enfleshment", of the Sound, Voice, Word of God that In The Beginni...

  Happy Christmas to all - - here at 7H, that was Christmas Eve sunset last evening, quite windy and chilling down, but after all the fiercely driving rain earlier. It turned out a proper evening for going to the late service at church.  Still cool, 39°F when we got up around seven o'clock this morning, 43° at the moment, wind NW 15 mph. Long line of low clouds on the horizon across the Bay, beyond Shell Island, out over the Gulf of Mexico. covid Christmas is different, just us two here. Christmas Past, 7H would be filled with beloved personalities and voices, a  large turkey in the oven. This time we have a leg of lamb, with a couple of new potatoes, onions, and several whole large mushrooms roasting. With it, an Argentine Malbec that I opened yesterday to air and be perfect for keeping the XRISTOS in Xmas. Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:34, from Q obviously. Not to mention my incomparable oyster dressing, so superb that, along with a mug of black coffee, I...

  Our usual Christmas Eve innit, 66°F going to 70° this morning before plummeting as the front passes through, drenching then leaving us in the thirties for whatever serves tonight in place of what once was Midnight Mass. I remember first going with my Father Christmas Eve 1948, another car memory, new green 1948 Dodge sedan leaving St Andrew's Episcopal Church, the parking area in back, my father rolling the window down and saying "Merry Christmas, John" to Mr Pennel, our choir star, as we backed out to head home after the service.  The rain starts now, as ospreys dive for mullet just off 7H: read they've about 50% success, the dive I just witnessed not bringing up a fish. Could be worse, some are having/expecting snow blizzard, BTDT, a beauty of nature that's not for me though everyone is entitled to see it, or to be there at least once in a lifetime. Christmas music blesses the airways, ours via Bose from Celtic Ladies, including this one that always puzzled me...

The mind is a fantastical feature of Being, isn't it. Seems to have no limits on what it can cling to and instantaneously call forth. All through life, memory moments come to mind, triggered by something we do, or see, or hear. This morning on my way out to see beloved ones at PCB, Kris and Malinda, as I crossed the new flyover between Port Panama City and Gulf Coast State College, I glanced quickly over my shoulder to check before changing lanes. Doing that, checking my blindspot, invariably, always, without fail, triggers a memory.  This was on our way home to Panama City from Columbus, Ohio on leave in 1972 or 73 or 74. Dates have been easy for me to approximate when I associate a memory with the car I'm driving at the time. The five of us, Linda, Malinda, Joe, Tass, and I, were in our 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser, an enormous, nine-passenger station wagon that I'd ordered built to my specifications from Key Olds in Columbus after Tass was born. It was a soft yellow co...

Monday is my morning to publish the lectionary Propers for the upcoming Sunday and email them to "subscribing" members of our adult Sunday School class (not everyone in the class opted to be on the distribution list) and I'll do that, but a few other thoughts here before finishing up there. One, ship passing 7H at 5:33 a.m. just now, showing her green starboard running light. Another, sickened by news of alarmed White House officials telling, leaking, warning, that last Friday there was argument in the Oval Office about martial law to force overturning the 2020 election. Hardly surprising, considering, and promptly denied, also hardly surprising, considering; but credible and sickening. Surely not, though anything stirred by lunatic fringe might be considered by cornered, desperate men. In the event of such blatant abuse of power, my faith would be in the integrity of military commanders sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.   Another...

Nearly missed her this morning, Enviva WL Totma 591x98, gliding by early dawn, underway with wood pellets for Rotterdam. A new client, don't recall Rotterdam as a destination before. Photo is bad because I lightened the original, which showed only lights in the darkness, to get an idea of her size and silhouette. One of our larger ships coming into Port PC, four cranes.  Meanwhile, the top photo is Saturday breakfast, sausage split, served on one slice of lightly-toasted Simple Kneads gluten-free sour dough bread. Excellent. Yes, I like mayo on it, WTH, I like Hellmann's on everything but ice cream. And with sausage, always the curly squiggle of yellow mustard: this time mustard on the flat side bottom of the split sausage so as not to smear mustard on my lips with every bite.  Sausage? Several kinds of sausage here, both wild game and domesticated. A gift, this is pork sausage from Bradley's Country Store in Tallahassee, incomparably superior to anything you will fi...

Advent 4: Mary Sunday coming up. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." Common in anglo-catholicism of the Episcopal Church, Anglican Communion, Marian devotion is not unique to Roman Catholics. It makes sense, seeing Mary's picture in art, in every nativity window, on every other Christmas card. Present in the most intimate Bible scenes. Our dearest stories of Jesus include his mother, even if an artist just paints her into the scene.  This is one I especially like, found on line. Exasperated with her motherly pride when she embarrasses him in front of his friends at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, "Motherrrr! Not yet! Mommm, please! Don't do this to me." In fact, I remember, I had a mother like that, always bragging on me, wanting to show me off, maybe you did too. It was embarrassing, ...

In my office early yesterday for a long overdue visit with a close friend of long years, "my boy", like a son! then on the way back along Beach Drive West to 7H. But first Beach Drive East over Tarpon Dock Bridge, I successfully fought off, then immediately regretted and have regretted ever since, overpowering my sensitive SRXV8's tug at the steering wheel as it tried to stop for oysters. My car loves me and knows best, next time I'll do what it says. Raw is my preference, as the sauce collection in front of me keeps shouting. The iPad camera caught that shot of this end of the dining room table, where everything has been pushed so Linda can wrap Xmas presents (keep  XPISTOS in Xmas). And there sits my late morning coffee, a decent cup of Gevalia with T's personal mix of powdered heavy cream and powdered whole milk ordered online. See, but for covid I'd never have done that, "for every loss there's a gain", as Fr John Claypool found out in life a...