Contemplating "in the news" and world situations this morning as we wait for the Weather to arrive. People suffer through life the world over, but, like ants in our own anthill warring with anthills in the same sandlot, we couldn't care less except for others except for those in our own anthill who share our nonsensical certainties. Mark 9:1 again for its choice word,  ἴδωσιν from ὁράω, we fail, and fail is the word, to discern, perceive, realize, comprehend, understand, that Earth is One, and fragile, vulnerable, singular, and at risk in a seemingly boundless, expanding Universe that, in its rush toward infinity, could not possibly care less whether we destroyed ourselves and our planet. If we are truly created in the image of a Creator God (and not God imagined by us in our image), whose methodology is demonstrably Darwin's Evolution, we are yet eons from evolving into the God of Love that/whom we preach. +++++++++ Top image: the Spanish coastguard has rescued three...

  Early coffee outside on 7H porch, perfectly clear sky emblazoned with stars. Light from downtown Panama City to the east and PCB Thomas Drive to the west degrades the view looking up at/for the rest of our Milky Way galaxy, but it's pretty much straight overhead and I'm not into leaning out to look up anyway. 63°F 74%, wind SE 3 mph. Pleasant morning to be outside so enjoy while it's possible, because winters it's too chilly until next spring 2023. What I enjoy at ground level from 7H porch is the curved lights of Tyndall Bridge. And the Tyndall beacon. Shrimp boats if there are any, but none recently.  Sunrise 6:19, sunset 4:46, reducing sunlight to about ten hours a day until December 21 or so, when Earth will start tilting the other way until next June. Nature, the Universe, is a sheer marvel. Why can't we Earthlings see, perceive, realize, comprehend, understand, and make the most of, that we're here on lease, renters for a while in Time and space, rise ab...

  Did you catch the words of our magnificent Advent hymn? “The king shall come when morning dawns, and light triumphant breaks” - - it's the Light of Christ, the shuKINEah of God. shuKINEah, a peculiar word: I shall speak of it. You may be seated. ++++++++++ Advent: “He comes” - high anticipation, great excitement, Christmas, the First Coming of Christ. But also - - completely obscured by shopping, decorating, holiday plans, and Santa Claus, we dismiss as doubtful and irrelevant - - the Mystery of Faith, “Christ will come again”, the shuKINEah - - I want you to “ get it”  about the Messiah, because it’s imbedded in Christian history and origins. We begin with Heilsgeschichte , Jewish holy history, holy stories (and our own holy stories) of the awesome, terrifying, sometimes blindingly bright shining presence of the glory of God - - that rabbis and Jewish scholars call the shuKINEah,  the shuKINEah , the presence of God's glory on earth. Stories you know: Genesis 15, when...

  It's still Thanksgiving, you know - - and you know what happens during Thanksgiving Weekend, and it isn't always a pretty thing. Sometimes there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. Sometimes there's jubiliation. My custom during my early years at Trinity, Apalachicola was for the Gators to beat the Seminoles so I could post the football score on the hymn board. But Gators don't always beat Seminoles, nor does Blue beat Ohio State though with Jim Harbaugh we're finally on the way, nor even does Tide always roll over the Tigers.  Choose your game, choose your match. USA USA USA USA T

  Thanksgiving Day here on St Andrews Bay begins with what I believe is our first foggy morning of fog season. For late fall into winter, fog will greet us mornings when the dew point and temperature are in synch. At the moment 59° and 60° F and humidity of 95%. Owing to the FIFA soccer schedule, our family feast day this year is Saturday, with a 20 lb turkey and fixin's. This morning I'm going to a friend's church service, and Kristen is coming about noon for TGvg Dinner of roast leg of lamb, asparagus and mushrooms. I'm going to use a fiery lamb dish from TJ's to make a spicy lamb gravy. What am I mindfully thankful for?  For life & breath & health into our ancient age.  For love that both goes out to beloveds and comes my way.  For those I love most in life: health, safety and wellbeing, tentative though it be.  For oldest friendships, one dating back fifty years into Navy life, renewed decades later and still strong; one dati...

  Wednesday in Thanksgiving Week, school is out and people are traveling. Only getting online News, which seems more instant oriented, and practically never watching television, I'm seeing no statistics about jammed highways and crowded airports and panic about cancelled flights, even though maybe except for the covid years this has been a heaviest traveling Time of year. Covid may have made people wary of crowds or of trusting the airlines, but I doubt it. In the News, another mass shooting, six dead, multiple injuries, people hospitalized, and the murderer dead at the WalMart in Chesapeake, Virginia. If the question is How much is enough? the answer is that we aren't interested in answers, because answers could interfere with our Rights and we're unwilling to go there regardless of the cost in innocent lives being deprived of their right to life. It again brings up the subject of Firearms. Speaking to the red cap crowd: the only way to Make America Great Again is to retu...

  Crisp, 53° wind NNE 7 mph, cloudy in the eastern sky, the west is clear black velvet with stars and planets. At 4:53 am, gliding silently by me on the dark Bay, a small ship, doubtless one of the locals that works back and forth between here and Progreso.  My mug of coffee club hot & black is just right this morning, neither better nor worse for my having dipped my finger into it for coffee to clean my eyeglasses: hot coffee works quite well for that. Put my ears in as I walked by them in their overnight resting place, so I heard as the coffee finished making itself.  Across the room, the magic picture frame lights up with photos and video clips of beloveds. I turned it to face me so I can watch it from here in my chair at my little table in the living room. There's Lilly and her dog Ella, there's Charlotte with her trumpet, there's Ray, Brit and Lilly in the great northwest with tall, straight fir trees behind them. There's Kristen, smiling with a st...

Saturday morning Walt & Judy drove over from Pensacola, way too long since I'd seen my brother. We had a visit here in 7H then went down to Hunt's for noon dinner. Not crowded, just a few minutes waiting on the benches out front and then we were ushered in to a nice corner table with windows. It was a bit cool for me inside and I was glad to have worn a jacket shirt over one of my khaki-colored what L L Bean calls a hurricane shirt, though my hands were cold the entire time.  My dinner included two dozen of the most delicious oysters I remember ever having half-shell, nice large size, cold salty ones to slurp from the shell; and brought home enough of my fried oysters to have a couple for breakfast before church yesterday, and oysters, hushpuppies and an onion ring for breakfast just now. A fitting breakfast for a person of my ilk. My pulpit next Sunday, so'll be devoting a bit of Time each day to contemplating what to say on this First Sunday of Advent to what will be ...

  11:56 pm. The dark zone - - of oblivion. It's still yesterday, it's not tomorrow yet. Cold and pitch black dark, not even the wee hours. Timeless and tentative, like infinity, or eternity: this must be what purgatory would be like if it weren't nonsense. No nap Friday afternoon, hopelessly dozed off about five-thirty, so to bed, awake again at eleven-ten and up for hot & black decaf coffee, a bit of cheese from TJ's, a browse of email, news, and opinion, and these little stars staring at me. All they do is look at me, stare expectantly. Maybe they think I'm their mama. "Did you bring us anything?" No, I didn't, go back to sleep, you guys. Next to them, the dusty miller, gray bluish-green. Next to the dusty miller a lily that may soon shoot up a long green stem topped with a huge red blossom.  Next to the lily the Christmas cactus is coming into its own, loaded with red buds, three of which are already opening into flowers. What's life all Abo...

  This morning, Smithsonian Magazine online has a reminiscing article about license plates, that takes me back.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/biggest-license-plate-fails-us-history-180981025/?utm_source=smithsonianhistandarch&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=202211-hist&spMailingID=47647894&spUserID=NjU5OTAwNDUxNjk4S0&spJobID=2342401721&spReportId=MjM0MjQwMTcyMQS2 I don't know about earlier, but my boyhood memory is Florida license plates identifying the county of the car's residence, it must have been by population size at some point, Bay County was 23, for example. Dade County was 1, I think Duval County was 2, and Escambia County was 9 as I recall. So the first number on a license plate declared which county you were from. Robert may remember.  That wasn't all. The next figure after the county number identified the category of the car, I'm pretty sure the weight class, but to me as a car nut it was the presti...

  Good morning! Tuesday is rolling around again, I don't know how this keeps happening. It's three-forty-something o'clock in the wee hours. Outside, the sky is ominously dark, storm clouds gathering, a hundred percent chance of rain in the forecast, maybe with thunder and lightning, maybe that ugly part will stay in the Gulf. 61° and drizzly at the moment, with rain forecast to start at four o'clock. We have a doctor's appointment this morning and are hoping to get a parking spot close enough to the clinic's front door to avoid getting soaked. Life is Good. Sometimes things happen, come up suddenly, especially involving loved ones, longstanding friends and family, that make life's usual anxieties pale and fade. I wake, make coffee, open email, and part of my world collapses, anxiety skyrockets, a health issue with ones who are far more than special friends to me, with whom I have family involvement and a history of seeing through tough Times together. Why i...