and traveling mercies, Lord

Sadness this morning as I keep checking Elizabeth Anagnostis MacWhinnie's FB page for medical updates on Anthony.

Father Anthony. First assignment after he was ordained, Anthony worked with me as his mentor for a year at St Thomas by the Sea, Laguna Beach. Very casual and easy, Anthony was fun to serve with. A bright man who at first glance doesn't appear to be the intellectual that he is, Anthony's a marine scientist, the field he worked in before theological seminary, and he liked to share with me fascinating knowledge about sea life.

Anthony's a Pensacola native who grew up fishing and hunting, an avid outdoor sportsman who enjoyed cooking everything he shot. Anthony's parents, both dead now, apparently were also outdoors people: Anthony once told me that his mother could tell by its taste, which Pensacola area bayou a mullet came from. When we had parish suppers at St Thomas that year, Anthony always prepared and brought something delicious from the wild.

Yes a hunter, and Anthony never shot anything he didn't cook and eat and he told me stories about some of his unusual kills, but Anthony loves animals. His very first day with us at St Thomas, we found a horrifyingly large spider on the floor in Jewell Hall, the parish gathering room. I would have kept my safe distance as I sprayed it and then stomped it, but Anthony got a glass from the pantry, a glass and a sheet of paper. Carefully, he set the glass down over it, capturing the spider, slid the paper underneath, then took the spider outside and set it safely free in the yard. Something about a man who is kind to spiders, saves them, and sets them free.

Any number of memories come to mind, perhaps one or two more now.

I was the priest in charge at St Thomas about five years, from August 2004 to April 2009, including the year Anthony and I worked together. Every summer of those years, a youth group came down from up North, about a dozen teenagers and their adult leader, I don't remember where they were from. Every year their leader called me ahead of their arrival date and asked me to meet with them for Holy Communion on the beach where the waves came ashore. It was always a good Time. This year they came about a week after Anthony arrived, and I asked him to be involved. After reading the gospel lesson, which was something about the sea, Anthony picked up something white from the sand at his feet, explained to our guests that it was part of a sand dollar, showed them its cross shape, and passed it around for each person to hold and examine while he told a captivating related story as a homily.

Many of Anthony's sermons that year were about the sea, others about hunting and fishing adventures. His son Trey was maybe three or four at the Time, and always while church was going on, and while Anthony was preaching, Trey would be crawling around on the floor and under the pews. He was adorable and cute, and the folks at St Thomas were very accepting and kind. Trey was our guest student in a HNES kindergarten class that year, and when I stuck my head in the door of his classroom he'd leap from his desk and come running to the door for a hug. Trey's a teenager now, high school or beyond, a musician like his father, plays in his own band, music group. Sometimes through covid when nobody could come to church on Sunday, I'd glance over at the live feed from St Monica's, where Anthony is rector, and Trey would be the Reader for his dad.

Maybe one more? One summer during his seminary years at Southwest in Austin, Anthony and another student were sent to South or Central America as visiting ministers in training. A new acquaintance there took Anthony on trips into the forest or jungle and, one day, showed him a large hole in the ground. The man picked a long thin reed and poked it into the hole. After a moment, a huge tarantula emerged to seize his prey. The man expected Anthony to jump back startled and terrified, but Anthony looked at the spider and asked the man, "I wonder if it would be good to eat?!"

Last Friday evening Anthony collapsed with cardiac arrest. He's in ICU on a ventilator, serious condition and concern about brain activity. LHM, CHM, LHM. I pray he can dream, good dreams about fascinating adventures, places he has been, things he has done, and people he loves. Traveling mercies, Lord.

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Pic: lifted from Elizabeth's FB page, sans permission, but I don't think she'd mind.