the Becoming

 

It's just me, sitting here letting fingers tippy type their usual nonsense. Friday the Fifteenth, is it really 2021, and are we actually half-way through January already?! My friends, life IS short, and we HAVEN'T much Time to gladden the hearts of others and our own hearts - - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's 57°F outside, raining, a typical beloved NW Florida Gulf Coast winter morning. 

Rescheduled from later, today we're to get our covid vaccine. And Every Day Is A Beautiful Day - - which by the time you're age 85 as I am you'll realize, and maybe think as I do every morning since first having known Bill Lloyd, that I could have been having this Epiphany every day of my life.

My "The Good Book Club" posting about Mark's gospel is going up every morning, 1 Jan through 16 Feb, posting to my +Time blog, and to my Facebook page, and to Holy Nativity Facebook page. Most days I'm enjoying the challenge of seeing something epiphanic for the Season before Lent, writing and posting something like one of our Sunday School sessions. 

Here inside 7H, every day IS a beautiful day, but some days down there at ground level as we watch on television, are so distracting, appalling, tense, upsetting, horrifying, frightening that it's a struggle to be mindful of things that shall endure over things of this earth. How long, Lord?    

Some days as well, I think yesterday was one but I'm not going back to check, I've written some observation or judgment of current events as I see them from 7H and my own life. Mind, I've been human since conception, American since birth, Christian and Episcopalian since baptism, deacon & priest only since ordination. All of which is to say I have, and am as entitled to, my life and experiences, views and opinions as you are yours, my fellow Americans! Our First Amendment applies as well to me too, and within bounds of decency and limited intellect, and never with the purpose of offending, I'll express myself as I DWP --> if you want to express yourself, getting your own weblog and FB page is all free, ho anaginowskown noeito!!!

As for being priest, in the Episcopal Church we are such an amalgam of America that no two people in the pew (or indeed behind the Altar rail) think alike or believe alike or have the same experiences and worldview, socially, politically, religiously, theologically. Like any Christian assembly, we have doctrine but not mandated dogma, and in the Episcopal Church we are free to doubt and discuss, challenge. Focusing on The Sacred and the Profane, which is The Nature of Religion (Mercea Eliade), most of us priests try conscientiously to steer clear of driving through the political minefield, so we avoid showing our politics in the pulpit, in the Episcopal church we don't see it as our business to tell you how to vote. Though if God's people are involved (and if God's people are NOT involved, every word we speak is irrelevant) politics inevitably rears its hideous face and we risk parish peace. But, we try. In some other church denominations the pastors freely preach politics and safely because everyone in the pew is nodding her/his head, but that's not the case with us.

Still, not to overwork the metaphor, Jesus made himself the enemy of the political and religious establishment by speaking God's truth into certainty and hatred, and was crucified for it: the call of every Christian is the discipleship of Christ that is literally the Becoming - - the Way of the Cross that is Becoming what Jesus was/God is, the process itself. If the church presumes to speak the Word as received day to day, who has ears, listen. If I see, perceive evil, I'll say so, even if you blow up!! 

On +Time, I write what I DWP and usually but not always post a link to it on my FB page. If it's TGBC and I'm writing as an Episcopal priest, I also post the link on our parish FB page. I promise not to post on our parish FB page anything that is just TW speaking and that isn't speaking to/for the church! 

Note the !!! use of exclamation points!!! I think they're the literary mark of an idiot, but I'm using them freely to convey - - because reading what someone wrote is not the same as hearing them face to face and can be misunderstood in both meaning and mood/temper!!! - - that all this is said kindly and is meant to be taken lightly!!!

No one has to agree with what I say, in writing, in conversation, in Sunday School class, or in having just stepped down from the pulpit. I'm as unsure of myself as anyone on the planet. 

lovingly,

BLM&PTL

T fer Tom