happy birthday &c

 

Monday, February 1, 2021. Nicholas, first grandchild, turns 36 today. This day in 1985 we were at our first CGC diocesan convention, having the previous summer relocated from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Trinity, Apalachicola in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast. While Linda and I were in Mobile, Tass was at home with my parents, and we were staying in the high-rise hotel in Mobile. As I was looking out the hotel window at the battleship USS ALABAMA, the phone rang and Joe announced, "You have a grandson, Nicholas Kevin Weller". The following summer we drove out to Killeen, Texas to see him - - for me it was instant bonding, and later after his parents got out of the Army and moved to Florida, years of loving having Nick with me in Apalachicola, as often as possible, and every time for as long as possible, a highlight of life's memories! 

During that Texas trip, we went to a Houston Astro's game, and that Sunday in Texas we went to church at Redeemer, Houston, at that time the prime moving parish in the Charismatic Movement of the Episcopal Church. Including, many of our best praise songs came out of that movement and from Redeemer. It was glorious, another highlight of life. But the movement transmogrified backwards, from spicy pickles to tasteless cucumbers.

So what else is new? Creating hyperlinks is common and easy on blogger, but I've not yet figured out how to make it work with the new Berean Study Bible as I copy and paste passages from their new WonderWork. In due course perhaps.

Trying to find ways to reclaim my joy in being an American in the politically divisive hate-filled nation we have become and into which we are sinking deeper as people determine to clutch hatred. How to manage? Maybe practice flushing it down every time the despair sets in and refocus on real life around me instead of what's in my mind? 

Greatly, how to keep it out of the pulpit while clinging to some semblance of integrity and morality when gospel and the politics of human life are one and the same and to separate them renders politics ungodly and the gospel meaningless. My gospel is not about Jesus dying to forgive my sins so I can go to heaven, an obscene, self-centering perversion that preys on human nature and that the Church from the Dark Ages and into the present day developed, fine-tuned, preached and enforced as a means of control (read Follett, The Pillars of the Earth); but the gospel of Jesus Christ is the Way of the Cross as the way of life, the Baptismal Covenant, my promise in Jesus' Name to love my neighbor as myself, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being.

So, I need to work on it and, without furthering division, maintain loving respect with those around me whose views are a-hundred-eighty-out from my own on every front.

Son Joe relocating from North Carolina to Kentucky and an exciting life change, a challenging new job that a company is creating just to match his experience and skills, home in a quaint 1920s bungalow in an old neighborhood of Louisville, a short walk to a charming old time small-town feeling main street with many interesting restaurants. And what? a five minute drive across the Ohio River into Indiana. Maybe when covid19 resolves itself, we can drive up and I can again find my way to the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum, haven't been there since 1980 and my life-before-last. 

At first glance opening the door to get Linda's Panama City Newsletter and facing 45°F wind NW 19 mph, it will be an unpleasant walk, which I'll make down flights of stairs to the park level, down to the garage, around the garage five times to make it a mile (no, One time, I know myself well) and pop into the elevator back to 7H, a cup of black, and maybe an anchovy sandwich.

RsfBlm&Ptl

T-fer