It's possible to bring Good out of almost anything, including covid as we emerge from it. May some elements of society have learned something they can keep as part of New Normal, including that it works to allow employees with integrity to work from home if they prefer. Including that Sunday worship can be improved. In my years, every Memorial Day Weekend I instituted something billed as "Summer Liturgy" in which, so as to cut folks loose to go up the river fishing or beat the Baptists to The Grill, we honored all the rubrical "shalls" but left out all the "mays" for the duration, and I cut down on sermon length. Nobody heard me after ten minutes anyway, and when we read a psalm and second lesson, eyes were seen glazing over and heads nodding off. We are doing this same thing at our church through the summer. I've also found out that we don't need two cars; but when cars are paid for and maintenance is minimal and insurance is reasonable, mig...

  Good morning, friends, today is Trinity Sunday, our last of Principal Feast days for the five months until All Saints Day late into Fall 2021. Here's from BCP page 15. I enlarged the print and adjusted the text, hope it appears decent on your screen. The Calendar of the Church Year The Church Year consists of two cycles of feasts and holy days: one is dependent upon the movable date of the Sunday of the Resurrection or Easter Day; the other, upon the fixed date of December 25, the Feast of our Lord's Nativity or Christmas Day. Easter Day is always the first Sunday after the full moon that falls on or after March 21. It cannot occur before March 22 or after April 25. The sequence of all Sundays of the Church Year depends upon the date of Easter Day. But the Sundays of Advent are always the four Sundays before Christmas Day, whether it occurs on a Sunday or a weekday. The date of Easter also determines the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, ...

  A brilliant burst of light brought me fully awake and a glance at the red-glowing bedside clock said it was three-something, I don't remember exactly what, 3:28? Maybe. IDK. My first thought was someone was still fishing with a light below and had shined it up on the building, or it was the occasional ship passing by at this hour and ran a searchlight along the shore. But then it happened again and the rumble that followed signaled a passing t-storm and if I wanted to watch and enjoy I had to get up right now. Father Nature, coffee, and ringside, my chair at the bayside window. Streak lightning and a splendid fireworks display with delayed rumbles not claps of thunder, count eleven, safe distance.  Before the 2018 collapse during which Joseph was lightning struck, I loved these, anymore it's no longer the grace that is unconditional love, but awe mingled with fear and hope that nobody was at the strike point. It gets personal, Zeus, eh? Thor, Thunor? Is there a Hur...

Many years a Buechner fan, I appreciated this morning's wise thought. A Point of No Return     THE WORLD IS FULL of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else. This does not mean, of course, people who are doing work that from the outside looks unglamorous and hum-drum, because obviously such work as that may be a crucial form of service and deeply creative. But it means people who are doing work that seems simply irrelevant not only to the great human needs and issues of our time but also to their own need to grow and develop as humans.   In John Marquand's novel  Point of No Return , for instance, after years of apple-polishing and bucking for promotion and dedicating all his e...

  It doesn't entirely work, but I'm trying to blog less because it's virtually impossible for a person of conscience and human decency to refrain from comment on the unspeakably evil political game going on; and though I'm of a mind to blog about politics, I'm not interested in +Time devolving into a forum. Besides my interest in People - - which is what both religion and politics are singularly about, People, therefore anyone who says religion and politics don't mix is ignorant of the gospel of Jesus Christ - - I have other interests, two of them, as folks who know me know, being automobiles and astronomy.  Just so, opening email this morning, the first two things that catch my attention are  https://earthsky.org with an article and pictures "2021's best photographs of our Milky Way" and an automobile newsletter's pics of a 1958 Edsel that's up for sale or auction and I'm torn as to which to top this morning's blogpost. So eeny mee...

  No longer very often at my office at the church, either out the church office building back door onto the patio and next door to the left, or direct through the garage, into two rooms that in their history were combo dog kennel, laundry, and children's playroom (when I inherited the space in 2009, it took a great deal of imagination, determination, Time and effort to overcome the smell of wet doggy fur and doggy doo soaked walls), I was there yesterday for a little while.  It's a great space, my church office, secluded and private, perfect for me, totally refreshed after HMichael though four of my five comfortable chairs are still awol (if I decide I need them, I'll shop Craigslist, or the Facebook marketplace where I found the shelves that replaced those HMichael destroyed), space that houses what's left of my clergy-life accumulation of books.  Yesterday morning, going through to pick up Roget's Thesaurus and a huge, thick NRSV Concordance (someone...