Okay, it's Monday
Two-oh-eight, way too early to be up, and surely I'm not up to stay? Although last evening when I gave up and got in bed at seven-thirty and was asleep within seconds, we both knew I'd be up at two.
Not best: for quiet, I left the bedroom without picking up eyeglasses from the bedside chest, and the other four pairs of my current-prescription eyeglasses are on a hook on my bookshelf in the bedroom where Linda is asleep.
Outdoors, total white fog covers the Bay, not even a channel navigation light is visible from 7H, where, Indoors it's 68° nice and cool for sleeping but the HVAC's gentle fan is giving me a bit of a chill. So,
Two-four-oh, back wearing a jacket, blanket on lap, legs and feet; and with a mug of hot & black, a packet of two saltines from Saturday's early afternoon dinner at Captain's Table, where they offered a choice of whole mullet or mullet fillets. I had the most perfect and delicious fresh mullet in memory going back to my childhood when, to take home for Mama to fry for supper, I'd select the largest fresh caught mullet from the ice case in our fish market where I started working the summer I was nine years old, scaled and cleaned them myself: split, bone in, fried. Munch the crispy tail first, then pull out the fins with their bones, munch the crispy ends of the fins, enjoy the boneless-side fillet (fried mullet exercise requires abandoning concern about greasy fingers). With knife, gently remove backbone from the other side. With teeth, pull the fry and meat from the backbone until all that's left looks like a double-sided white comb. And then the Grand Finale piece de resistance: waiting on your plate before you is the most elegantly moist bit of deliciousness known to man.
Raw on the half-shell (okay, I overdid it by having two dozen), nice size cold salty oysters from Louisiana. Shared among the four of us, appetizer of fried shrimp, fried oysters, and hushpuppies. Water with lemon (Malinda had ice tea). Linda also had fried mullet, but the fillets not the whole fish. Kristen and Malinda had grouper, grilled. Done, I paid the bill, tipped thirty percent because of the excellent service and superlative food, and left the restaurant ready, willing, and able to face the New Year after a collapse in bed long afternoon nap, and that is all there's left to say about our 2022 New Years Eve Saturday afternoon.
Okay, I can see without eyeglasses, but not comfortably to read and type, so look! In a drawer in the breakfront in my office/study/den is a collection of more than a dozen eyeglasses. Four or five pairs of old prescription glasses, a couple are bi-focals. Six or eight pairs of #? reading and/or altar/pulpit/computer glasses from Target, CVS, and the BX at Tyndall AFB. So I chose a new cheap pair, peeled off the transparent protective cover, and they'll do for the duration.
This isn't a mind dump, that may be next or after next or not at all, this is a minute by minute recording of my earliest Monday Morning, January 2, 2023. As you say, "who cares!"
With each saltine, a folded over slice of French emmental cheese and a sip of coffee.
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My own personal interests seem to have little or nothing to do with Life at large or Earth at small. The universe, photographs from NASA's new JWST. Ongoing for years: bone to pick with Christology, Trinitarian theology, and the Nicene Creed, including reading whatever my online source Academia.edu, even though I'm no scholar or academic, sends me to read. Most recently a thesis-length "THE NICENE CREED, A Critical Essay" by Alexis G Hoen, whom I never heard of, but Academia.edu even sends me term papers by theological seminary middlers, this may be one, or he may be just as off the wall as I am and just write stuff? Below I quote some phrases from Hoen as well as his conclusion.
To pick at his paper: he doesn't say why he's writing it, to whom or for whom, it isn't dated; in 129 pages of text he has an Introduction and a Conclusion but doesn't set off the main body of his text as such, so that the reader goes along for a dozen or so pages thinking s/he's still in the Introduction only to realize that this is the thesis; it's not offered as assertions backed up by Bibliography and References (of which Hoen has plenty of both), but as what Hoen believes, which since nobody gives a rat's axe what Hoen believes but readers may be interested, as I was, in what he may offer as proof, his "I believe approach" weakens it as an academic paper.
Alexis G Hoen 129 pages text, plus 6 page Bibliography, plus 9 page References, 288 minute read. .
Some things that caught my attention:
"That means that at the moment of my death I have the last chance to understand that my life was not a meaningless self-serving moment drowned in eternity but an important active contribution to Being."
"Page 129
Conclusion
I hope to have demonstrated convincingly the reasons for my beliefs outlined in the Introduction and I shall once again present them in a concise fashion.
I believe in a universal Spirit of creative advance into novelty and love of all creatures. That Spirit is God, identical with the Holy Spirit. In it we “live and move and have our being” because it is at the bottom of all matter.
It is therefore the innermost nature of everything and everything strives to serve God. But such service cannot be perfect because Being per se can only be manifested by individual beings, necessarily, to some extent, opposed to each other. We are all a part and apart. Evil arises frequently out of conflict but also exists independently. In all its forms it is the diametrically opposite of God and is therefore needed to define the essence of God and thus make his/her existence conceivable.
Jesus, through his teaching and sacrifice shows us a way to minimize our apartness and the amount of evil present in the world.
A perfect world would be one without action or defined goodness, a world standing still, a world where nothing happens, a world inimical to Being, yet as an agent of the Creative Principle I have the task of working toward bringing about such a world.
Our immortality is impersonal and consists in realization of our identity with the Creative Principle. Giving of myself to others is a way toward such realization. I cannot achieve it however without repenting the offences committed against that Principle. The Creative Spirit is conscious of itself and while within me causes me to judge my actions.
The understanding of my essence, the appropriate actions, and the remorse caused by failure, are the Second Coming of Jesus to me.
I believe in the ritual of Baptism that signifies my desire to free myself from the negative part of the psycho-physical stuff permeated by my innermost nature and to commence a life dedicated to that nature. I also believe in the rite of the Holy Communion that symbolizes my unity with others and with God through self-sacrifice."
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If nobody cares what Hoen believes, nobody cares what I Tom believe either, but "Seek The Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will" from one of my seminaries is a thesis of my own life, along with someone's assertion that "No amount of Belief makes anything True" - - and I'm in a vocation centered on Belief when it should be centered on a line in our BCP, "the Way of the Cross is the Way of Life". Anyway, that's Me. Often in my seeking I come across outrageous things; though he rationalizes Christianity as it is rather than starting his exploration from scratch, Hoen is not outrageous, but he could be more persuasive if he were more professional in how he presents.
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Scanning the news at this earliest of waking hours.
Ukraine, being obliterated, should turn viciously and vengefully with no-holds-barred bombardment of Moscow. The object of war is not ceasefire and everybody go home as happened with WWI, but victory by total destruction of the enemy or unconditional surrender of the enemy. Putin, who is conducting Total War while Zelensky holds back, needs to have this brought back home upon him.
Next Monday, January 9th, SEC SEC SEC SEC except that in a world turned upside down, having humiliated Michigan, the Texas Christian Horned Frogs should be able to whip the Georgia Bulldogs; and if they do not, we'll know that the Shekinah has departed from their locker room.
Oh-five-hundred hours, the last two sips of coffee are cold but still tasty, and it's Time for my morning nap.
No, here comes Linda to visit!
RSF&PTL
T