whatever
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?
Forcing, squashing, starving weight back down from the CHF six pound gain, oatmeal, chicken, oysters. Having wasted no time in the barber chair, yesterday, we swang by Tarpon Dock Seafood and bought crab cakes for Sunday dinner and a couple pints of oysters. There's a pint of oysters left, the other carton empty because I had raw, and then for supper a dozen "roasted" in the toaster-oven. They are large, what we used to call "selects".
No substitute for having a couple dozen raw half-shell oysters on an icy tray set down in front of me, but better than just thinking about oysters after reading Sean of the South stopping by a seafood cafe in SC and slurping down a dozen cold gray ones.
How do you like yours? I like mine just opened, loosened, cold and salty. Waiting for me. Not terrified though, do oysters have consciousness? pain?
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Some interesting reading this week. One NT scholar whom I respect and enjoy discussed the likelihood that Revelation was a Jewish text, perhaps written timely in response to the horrors of Pompeii and Nero, when it would have been totally understood by its readers. Working through Revelation to remove every evident interpolation such as "and the message of Jesus Christ" left him with a complete, readable, credible document for Jewish readers of the Time. So then, was Revelation adjusted early on for a Christian audience? Revelation is a controversial writing, and if I were doing Revelation in a Bible study or Sunday school class again, I'd ring in that possibility, probability, for awareness as a scholarly topic, and group discussion. Our Episcopal settings are generally open, free, nothing off the table, no ignorant innocent piety offended at our "daring to meddle with Scripture." But, yes, still and all, this sort of Bible "criticism" often involves a lot of mental adjustment. I know it did for me, but it has been immensely enriching in my life.
Having come up as a staunch believer, "Seek the Truth, Come whence it May, Cost what it Will" has come to be and is one of my life's encouragements, exhortatory, ongoing parenesis.
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More reading this week, a well-spoken case, objectively made, psyching Americans who seek to outlaw abortion, contraception, same-sex relationships, and other issues involving others are not so purity-driven as they themselves insist and firmly believe. Rather, it's a power play of their class to assert, exert and maintain legal, political, social control of the society. To keep others out. All things considered, including demographic shifts around the world and especially in America, the thesis makes sense to me: stay in control, don't abide anyone who is different from us.
In Time it will include Big Brother in bedrooms again, rewards for turning people in, and we will know that America is over and done.
Memories stir. One of my predecessors as priest at Trinity, Apalachicola earlier in the 20th century was the Rev S E Barnwell. An ongoing, popular rumor, because indeed people love a scandal, especially if it includes clergy, that Mr Barnwell had been seen making out with a woman. Oh the scandal, OMG the shame of it. No, my friend George Chapel had it right when he said that the question was not what Mr Barnwell was doing, the question was who was looking in the window.
People love to mind the business of others, a detestable wickedness rampant in our society these days, with movements to legalize what people cannot do, who they cannot do it with, and how they cannot do it. Control of others: satanic, one of the most contemptible evils among us. Most pointedly when forcing one's certainties on others, self-certain religionists rising from their knees to go forth and execute the will of God.
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Other pastimes these days of retirement include challenging solitaire games online. Watching our local ospreys swoop past 7H windows and circling out to hover and dive for fish. Keeping watch o'er a nest of three osprey chicks in Grand Lake, Colorado,
perfect little creatures, I knew them before they were even eggs, they'll be fledging before you know it.
Oh, and watching a local tour-boat captain make a living out of bringing passengers to see the burned out shrimp boat wreck several Times a day.
Saturday
RSF&PTL anyway
T