it's all good

The good life, right, nomesane? Dawn over StAndrews Bay, one of the small container ships arriving on her regular transit between Progreso and Port of Panama City. A cup of black coffee from my coffee club Xmas treat, and a line of uncommonly good white cheddar cheese from Trader Joe's cut up into nine tiny cubes for savoring with. The cheese is long-lived and I play lolly linger longer eating it.

Last evening I started a blogpost after checking the spelling of "whoa" and finding out that spelling for dummies has it up for grabs, if you don't really care you can now legitimately misspelled it "woah" - - so I'm thinking the new shortcut sort of writing brought on by rabid cellphone texting may change a lot of our American English spellings. Over the coming generation, word spellings could change faster than new iPhones come out. Every misspelled word in the National Spelling Bee with be up for challenge.

Anyway, I pressed Publish and sent that blogpost on its way.

Monday. The day most working folks love to hate over against TGIF, but for the last forty years of my life it's been TGIM, the day of rest after the weekend exhaustion. If you're an introvert, Sunday is a day of putting out with vigor and a smile, and you need the Monday to come up for air. In "my own" parishes I always took Monday off. Or at least that was my announced intent. What I found out the first part of that forty, living in the rectory next door to the church, was that there was never any time off, and living in a small town where everybody knew and loved everybody, Monday off never mattered, because whoever came to the door on Monday was always a welcome beloved.

My bishop at the Time had the policy and guideline that priests must take two days a week "off" but it is to laugh because they find you! So, as I recall here from Time to Time, the first nine years we lived in Apalachicola, I never had a day off. In fact, that's best characterized by a conversation - - a parishioner telling Frank, another parishioner, about a problem, and Frank advising him "Why don't you go talk to Tom? Go right now." The other guy says, "I can't go today, Monday's Tom's day off" - - to which Frank says, "Tom doesn't mind if you go on his day off." Which was always more than true. And between the parishioner visits and needy folks, half and half transients and local residents, knocking for groceries or gasoline, it was always a leisurely busy week in the small town of my heart.

But my father died in July 1993, and my mother was left alone in the big old house, and my Kristen was six months old in our smaller house on the other end of the property. So that month I started driving over to Panama City on Sunday afternoons, taking two days off per the Bishop, and returning to Apalachicola on Wednesday mornings. Did that for the next five years until permanently retiring from parish ministry late in 1998.

The next two parishes I had, in retirement, one for nineteen months and one for five years, I was prompt, regular, steady, and reliable, but more part time than full time, and always much more relaxed about being their parish priest. For one, a rector in a small church has a full time job encouraging them to make payroll: when you're on the retired rolls and working more for love and fun and not at all for career development, you can be in charge and preach the sermons, but let them worry about whether they can pay to fix the roof leak.

So here I am, no longer even a parish priest, but a helper priest with no worries. Monday's not the day off though, we have a staff meeting most Monday mornings, now at home on Zoom instead of in the office - - a blessing of the pandemic whether we like to say it or not. Put a sermon together for next Sunday. Work on the confirmation class I'll convene the first Sunday morning of March. Have leftover lamb curry for breakfast and poached salmon for dinner. Supper? Maybe a bowl of breakfast cereal.

So, the good life, nomesane?

Tide's out, 38° and sunny, wind NNE 5 mph.