all are welcome, no exceptions


Keeping my mouth shut: I used to excel at it on the basis that talking I learned nothing and, worst, could show abysmal ignorance; whereas over the Time of life most of what I learned was by listening to others. Listening, reading, watching, taking mental notes. Never learned a thing by talking except That It Would Have Been Wiser Not To.

Of late, realizing that Time is short for use of new learning anyway, I've taken to saying, writing, what I DWP. Well not always, it's often the case that keeping my mouth shut avoids offending, and never or seldom is it my purpose to offend. 

Yesterday morning I had a bunch of stuff in mind to blog, but instead got dressed and took Linda's car to be washed, and now've no idea what I'd meant to blog about yesterday. 

In regard to getting the car washed, it was the second time in four years. I drove it up to Waterworx carwash on 23rd Street/Northside Drive (is that a new name?), studied the sign of offerings, chose my product, and drove up to the magic machine where you select your carwash and insert your card to pay. Okay, here's what happens to the extreme elderly: I could make neither heads nor tails of what I was expected to code in at the magic machine, so after a few minutes pondering while vehicles drove up behind me, backed out and drove to Grease Pro carwash on 77 in Lynn Haven, where the customer deals with a helpful human. Got a proper carwash. The inside cleaning was the main thing, but her car looks new. Maybe again in four years if there's still a human at GPro. 

Here's our gospel reading for tomorrow, a doozy. Did Jesus really speak this harshly, condemning divorce? Someone said that if Jesus taught this it was because he was outraged at what Ezra ordered when the Judeans returned from Exile. Ezra chapters 9 and 10. In the half century of exile, many Jews had intermarried with Palestinians, had children and families. On returning home to Jerusalem from Exile, Ezra required that all Jews shed their Palestinian relationships, put away their foreign (non-Jewish) wives and children. It was a cruel, inhuman movement of racial and ethnic cleansing. Someone wrote that if Jesus was harsh on divorce it must have traced back to that history of divorce having been such a horrendous thing mandated by Ezra in Jewish history. The other thought I read was that under divorce law many husbands walked away from their marriage and family and left wife and children destitute, and Jesus was appalled by that. IDK.

At any event, this part of tomorrow's gospel is too far out from contemporary society to read, much less to preach. But not always: there was a Time in the Episcopal Church, my growing up years, when anyone who remarried after divorce was no longer welcome at the Communion rail. That Time is gone. I would not wish that sort of smugly sanctimonious church on my worst enemy. Yet there are still among us, gatekeeper self-righteous religionists who would build and canonize barriers of Qualification to the Lord's Table; which raises a universal question, Who indeed is qualified, worthy by her/his own righteousness? Let such a one step forward.


Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.



World Communion Sunday – October 3

World Communion Sunday offers congregations a distinctive opportunity to experience Holy Communion in the context of the global community of faith. The first Sunday of October has become a time when Christians in every culture break bread and pour the cup to remember and affirm Christ as the Head of the Church. On that day, they remember that they are part of the whole body of believers. Whether shared in a grand cathedral, a mud hut, outside on a hilltop, in a meetinghouse, or in a storefront, Christians celebrate the communion liturgy in as many ways as there are congregations. World Communion Sunday can be both a profound worship experience and a time for learning more about our wider community of faith.

https://prayerbookguide.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/world-communion-sunday/

https://www.ucc.org/event/world-communion-sunday/

https://www.umc.org/en/content/world-communion-sunday-ministry-article

World Communion Sunday? I wasn't aware of it, not a practice in TEC.


In Portugal, There Is Virtually No One Left to Vaccinate 

Portugal is among the most highly vaccinated countries in the world. Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who led the campaign, said there was a key to his success: Keep politics out of it.


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