John 14:1-6, 16-19 Jesus said, ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. And ye know the way to the place where I am going.’  Thomas said unto him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’  Jesus said, ‘I AM the way, and the truth, and the life.’ And Jesus said, “I will pray the Father, and he will send you another Counselor, the Holy Spirit, to be with you for ever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you desolate. I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me, Because I live, you will live also...

4:19 AM, 81° 81%, sunrise at 6:00 AM, I slide open the door to 7H porch and the muggy heat hits me as unwelcome as the frigid blast of bitter cold did in January.  One mug of strong hot coffee, sweetened for a change with raw sugar, lightened with whipping cream.  The HVAC has my OSD  too cold and breezy to sit at my round table desk  looking north on downtown StAndrews and up Beck Avenue to the traffic light by St Andrew Baptist Church, so sitting here at my Bay side window as the red navigation lights flash in my peripheral vision to the left of me. Someone posted a picture of Panama City Beach, Florida, early in their memory, some years after I was grown and gone off into the U S Navy. There are several more of us, I'm sure, but The Beach I remember is in the minds of Carl, Robert, and me. More people and explosive construction brought The Beach up to what I saw at Miami Beach in 1954 when my fraternity brother Brad drove us down, in his 1939 Mercury converti...

  Looks cold out there, but isn't, quite the contrary, as I sit up and look around. Morning comes and evening goes and life goes on for whoever's here.  Seemed like a light enough breakfast, mug of hot black coffee, half a cup of chicken salad, but twenty minutes later bam, zonk, whap, zot, bop, zap, head weighs a ton, neck and shoulders ache, BP 80/46 pulse 72, so a half hour lie down until it passes.  Addressed and thought it solved, but still haven't beat the sudden incapacitating plunge of carbo-coma. Must re-think breakfast, eh? Yesterday, coffee and one crunchy oatmeal cracker: bit hungry but fine and no car-com. Later, from my days in Hobbiton, second breakfast of one thin slice blue cheese, thick slice red tomato, mayonnaise, on one slice dark brown whole wheat bread, and twenty minutes later, biff, bop, zap, whop, down for an hour. Maybe back to the fifty calorie bowl of instant oatmeal. Gets old after a while, because I enjoy variety not same...

  What is it about mayonnaise? Maybe the slight lemony tang. Maybe the creaminess. IDK, but I like mayonnaise. Okay, what the hell, I love mayonnaise, it's what I most like about French-fried potatoes, the bowl of mayonnaise to scrape each stick through. Some people like catsup on their French-fries, mayonnaise for me .  When I was growing up we never had mayonnaise. We had "salad dressing" that looked exactly like mayonnaise, that Mama put on my sandwiches for lunch at Cove School, and I thought was the same thing until I had my first taste of Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise and never went back.  Seems to me the brand we had was Kraft's. Kraft's salad dressing, in the same shape glass jar as the Hellmann's mayonnaise we buy now that's in a plastic jar. Why did Mama buy salad dressing? IDK, maybe it was cheaper. I know it was always out and probably should have been in the ice box, before we had a refrigerator.  Those were lean Times. It was The Depression ...

  Life and Time go on, don't they; go on no matter what, don't they, life and Time; life in Time before, during, and after us, each of us individually, families, communities and nations of us. Again from Psalm 90, so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.  Somehow, Time seems to have its own life, which of course it actually does, at least from our perspective as earthlings, as from יְהִ֣י yeh-HI - - the commanding divine word "BE" - - until the greater light, that rules our day, expands and absorbs us, and all life ends; and with it, Time. At least here, for earthlings; there's a lot more to creation and the Universe than us, though. There's nothing observant or profound about this notion, it may be whimsical, maudlin, even a bit goofy; but we are here for a while, a little while, and then after us, everything, life and Time, go on wherever we were as if we were never here or there at all. And maybe we never really were, except for as long as we are held in t...

  Our Collect for the Day: O God, the protector of all who trust in you: have mercy upon us, that, with you as ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal. The years I led adult Sunday school class, EfM, and midweek Bible studies, we opened each session with prayer, often the Collect for the Day, our Proper prayer for the Sunday. Then like dissecting a dead frog in biology class, we'd pick the Collect apart to discover its theologies, and whether we agreed - - in the Address to God, its theological assertion of who and what God is; and in the Petition to God, its theology of what we ask God to do for us.  Simple theological discourse is fun to work in a group seeking to discover the theology of the Episcopal Church, where "lex orandi, lex credendi" what we believe about God is easily seen in what we do and say and sing and pray when we gather for worship. We have doctrine, though, NOT dogma: unlike many Christian de...

Wishing my brother Walt the happiest birthday ever, and hoping we can slurp oysters together very soon.  ++++++++ But most heavy on me this morning is the death of Ryan Yessman in a motorcycle accident this past Friday morning. Living in Winston Salem, NC, Ryan, who would have been, I think, 35, was the son of Ann and Ronnie Yessman, Mary Sittman's nephew, Allison's brother, and the father of two little girls. Ryan attended Holy Nativity Episcopal School from an early age, and graduated with Josh Austin and others in our middle school eighth grade graduating class of 2001. His sister Allison was in my Kristen's class, a longtime best friend. Working with Mary on the school property, and personal involvements with the family as priest and pastor, I have felt very close to everyone in this family for more than twenty years, and sudden grief, sadness, is a terrible beast to struggle with. There's a petition in our Great Litany, From dying suddenly and unprepared, Good L...

  Four-twenty-five, and begins Saturday, not quite on "schedule" - - we octogenarians, the lucky ones, live chaotically moment to moment, whatever comes next, whoever rings, knocks, or texts, with no schedule and liking it this way. Whenever, whoever, whatever, however. moxnixuns.   Others of us live by calendar and clock from appointment to appointment, pill to pill. I like no special organization in my day, life, calendar. At this point in Time just a preaching schedule sprinkled throughout the rest of the year, whatever's helpful. Oh, and a haircut schedule, which collapsed at one o'clock yesterday when no one was there, door locked, parking lot empty. Still, life and the day worked out fine, though shaggy Bubba in the pulpit tomorrow morning, but WTH, as I say, whatever.  As a Navy commander, one morning I showed up without a haircut for a personnel inspection I'd forgot, and the admiral wasn't impressed, but WTEGO, who gives a rat's ax, nomesane? Forc...