As happens every three years, in the summer of Lectionary Year B, starting last Sunday and through August 22, our gospel reading is from John chapter 6, which contains what is often called "the bread of life discourse". Unlike the synoptics (although the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and on the Plain in Luke, might be called such), the Gospel katà Iōánnēn, according to John, has several instances in which the evangelist, writing some sixty to ninety years after the Resurrection, gives several long verbatim quotations of Jesus, itself a regular question and challenge in Sunday School class, which scholars term "discourses". They are teaching event speeches, like a professor's lecture, rather than just short encounters. Rather than have a session about it each of the five Sundays, I'm proposing that we look at it this once, in part to condense, and in larger part so folks know what is going on when the odd snippet is read as the climax of the Liturgy of th...

  2 Samuel 11 David Commits Adultery with Bathsheba 1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. 2  It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. 3  David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4  So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her.  (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. 5  The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.” 6  So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7  When Uriah came to him, David asked how J...

  Ben & Jerry's boycotting the settlements, mox nix mir, forty years ago I preferred Haagen Dazs anyway, Macadamia Nut, and now it's Blue Bell hands down, Homemade Vanilla, no contest. But, oh, Tillamook's strawberry is excellent.  Thursday after Wednesday evening at church, fried chicken left over from Tuesday with love ones, and corn pudding, best ever, has cheese in it, perfect, most dishes need a touch of salt, not this.  A preprandial libation. A libation is generally a sacrifice poured out to a deity, this one, in a classy twelve ounce plastic mug with handle, two large cubes ice, pour in V8 regular chilled ice cold, top within two inches of the rim, inch of Polish potato vodka, heavy duty splash of gin for flavor the vodka lacks, three olives, olive brine from the jar to lend essence of dirty martini, plenty of Worcestershire, drip, drip, drip in Louisiana hot sauce, which, taste test reveals, does not do the trick, so shake shake shake shake shake Ta...

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid ... ... the opening of our Collect for Purity, our rite of cleansing that, Celebrant's option in Rite Two, opens our celebration of the Holy Eucharist. From that point on, if lex orandi lex credendi is true for us, we don't need to say the Confession of Sin and hear the Absolution, much less do we need to say the Prayer of Humble Access, because, in our theological perception, God makes us clean in that opening Collect. What do you think? More, what secrets surface and float through your conscious before the celebrant closes "through Christ our Lord" and you respond affirming "Amen", what flashes through your mind? What goes through my mind is not sins, of which there are too many to parade by every Sunday, but secrets. Not dark secrets, as Buechner sets them aside, but those he describes as "so precious we have no way of sharing them". Love, memories, ...

  The rainbow is gone now, but I got a few shots of it, both outside on 7H porch and from here sitting in my chair by the Bay.  That's a Navy craft in the second picture, a diver tender on the way out into the Gulf, I suppose for diver training exercises. There are two, and the first one is already out in the Pass. Navy divers are my lifelong heroes, along with Army Rangers and Navy SEALs and anyone in the U S Marine Corps and Eagle Scouts. I knew a Navy diver years ago, Eddie was in our 1953 graduating class at Bay High, then he and Andrea were stationed in Japan while we were there (1963-1966) and we had supper at their home once. Unlike us in Navy housing, they had a Japanese house, "on the economy" was the term as I recall, a charming place, classical, traditional, beautiful, ancient. While the wives were visiting, Eddie took me for a stroll through the surrounding property, wooded, and I suddenly came up against an enormous garden spider in the center of it...