Moon phase, waxing gibbous 70%. Starting way too early (sunrise is three and a half hours in today, Friday's, future, and, waking and rising at midnight I've been here three hours already and should be asleep with the rest of the western world, but it speaks promisingly and happily of a long morning nap to begin as Friday dawns), I'm thinking to comment on the second reading, our Epistle Reading, for day after tomorrow, Palm Sunday: the Sunday of the Passion. Sitting here Bay Side with a clear view outside, where it's 62° and 68° inside and I'm wearing my heavy, thick blue bathrobe and a lap blanket. Reasonably awake at the moment, but if drowse comes I'll go back to bed and so be it. Still and all, to rise so early is a blessing to be alive and alert and enjoy my Time of life. Not to wander too far before getting to my comment, but I remember, from 17 October 2010 to 24 January 2011, when the cardiologists had prognosed me two to five months to live, I took a...

  Things slip away, don't they. Whatever it was that I had in mind to blog about this morning is irretrievably gone. Linda says "not so" but I keep thinking I'm insane. Or at least a touch of insanity. Or maybe it's just the aging.  No, I'm pretty sure I'm insane.  Blogging becomes a problem when it gets treated like a diary, or even journal, and, being public instead of private, people see one's innermost thoughts. Well, not really the innermost. The totally innermost are never allowed to surface above periscope depth, nomesane? Anyway, deutsche Küche this morning: two thin slices of Braunschweiger on toast, along with the second mug of hot & black. Dream last night kept recurring after I woke up momentarily relieved it was just a dream: in a cave of some sort, it had narrowed down to a very close place. I was lying flat and trying to inch along to the next open space, lying flat because the floor of the cave and its ceiling had become so close, l...

  Okay, the corners: if it was a chocolate rabbit, I've already bitten two ears off. Always in grocery stores for Passover, this is matzo for the festival of unleavened bread. If you don't know matzo, you're missing a crispy treat.  Moreover, for a Christian who's into little round wafers instead of what the Bible says 23 ἐγὼ γὰρ παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου ὃ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν ὅτι ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ ᾗ παρεδίδετο ἔλαβεν ἄρτον (1 Cor 11:23) ... that on the night he was betrayed  ἔλαβεν ἄρτον he took bread ἄρτον, arton  arton is regular table bread, the same bread Jesus fed the five thousand, and the four thousand, and the same bread he took, blessed, broke and gave at the Last Supper.  But for any who don't use the scriptural arton, ordinary table bread, Old Testament unleavened bread, today matzo, would make perfect unleavened Communion bread, suitable for taking, blessing, breaking, and giving. This, my slice of matzo, is toasted w...

  Deutsche Küche, fog and deutsche Küche. Along with a second mug of hot & black, on a dank Tuesday morning, meine deutsche Küche: on seeded dark brown bread, Duke's mayonnaise (I'll return to that anon), very thin slivers of white onion, and thick-sliced Braunschweiger. It's not quite right, so the next Time I have it for breakfast I'll have a smear of mustard.  But about the mayo: although the taste is close enough (well, the Duke's does seem a bit more lemony), I've noticed something else. We have been exclusively Hellmann's folk for long years, but ran out of it a while back. The cost is predatory, so we only buy it when it's twofer, and the week we ran out of Hellmann's it was not twofer, but Duke's was, so we bought two jars of Duke's. The taste, with the two side by side I'd not likely be able to distinguish if it was part of a sandwich, but like whipped cream, Duke's starts collapsing from stiffness into runny softness aft...

  Lent 5 is always the final "regular" Sunday in Lent. We are in lectionary year A. The readings, including the gospel reading, vary from year to year, A, B, and C, but the collect, the prayer for the day, is always the same on Lent 5. The collect is printed below and I'm tempted to comment on it, but the gospel also is remarkable, the familiar story of Jesus raising Lazarus from death, "Lazarus, come out!" and the dead man rises and stumbles out of the tomb. Minding to keep it short, I'll try to comment briefly on each, first the collect and then the gospel. As is our Episcopal way, this collect is ancient, dating perhaps to the seventh century AD. It contrasts what we want with what God wants us to want and prays God to help us change, with the idea that we will there find true joy. I don't mean to go on, but it always reminds me of a story I've told here several times: as a new Navy ensign the summer 1958 I was finishing my second Navy school and ...

  Sean of the South is testament to the total selfishness that suicide can be. Talked about in his column with extraordinary frequency, Sean Dietrich will never heal from the damage his father John Dietrich brought down on Sean when John killed himself. Sean, who adored his father, was (what?), eleven years old, as I recall. Sean is tormented by what his father did to him. Deep in depression, despairing of life, is a main reason why people of all ages take their own lives. As a parish priest, I have officiated the funerals of several suicides, experiencing first hand the questioning, soul-searching, uncomprehending, agonizing grief of surviving loved ones. Their ultimate question comes down to a fact: he didn't love me enough to tolerate his suffering just because of me, to live for me.  It is the hundred-eighty-out diametrical opposite of the Man on the Cross. In the case in mind this morning, stirred by Sean's column for today, it comes home again that Sean is emotional...

  Good misty, foggy, hazy, humid Spring morning, self. Self has things to do, places to go, and people to see, but this going on in America (scroll down) really bothers me, so much as to pause and vent mildly. The rudeness into which political hatreds have fallen is beyond common decency; and worse, worst, dangerous, because it blocks conversation; and conversation, even if strained like two gorillas posturing and scratching up dust at each other, is the final safeguard against violence. Students are customarily, even traditionally, outrageous in their immaturity and arrogant know-all certainties; but courtesy counts in life, and if students, especially law students, are too self-centered and immature to understand that, they need to be mandatorily gapped for several years before further education, and conscripted into the military or a peace corps equivalent or to labor in the fields or to work in soup kitchens or required to complete vocational school and work in a trad...

  What an image, reminiscent of "On Golden Pond" and IDK, I reckon its title should be "407 Sunset" With 71° and calm blue Bay reflecting a clear blue sky,  we have the most idyllic spring morning imaginable, a Time that could go on forever, if only it would. But everything ends because that's what the Λόγος said, and endings are good, and awareness of endings helps us realize that Every Day is a Beautiful Day, and I've been so blessed in life to have known someone who cast it in just those words.  What am I doing? Musing, I guess, contemplating; what? Maybe our main human characteristic of having evolved into the self-awareness that seems to be unique to humans and as the Λόγος said it, "in our image, according to our likeness." Who was, is, this Λόγος? The prime mover: Whoever or Whatever said yeh-HI and there was and is. A seminary theologian suggested that What Is will go on being as long as the Λόγος goes on speaking. Sometimes I wonder if Wha...

Pitch black dark and it's 34° outside, 34° and with wind from due north at 11 mph it feels like 26° according to my weather app for West 10th Street with a little dot precisely on 7H. So it ain't no way in aitch I'm going outside onto the porch for a bracing moment, then have to warm up against the shivers when I come back inside.  It's Old Man Winter getting in his last breath of bluster: Monday, March 20 at 4:24 pm is the vernal equinox, and we all know what that means: this morning is the final hours of Winter and this afternoon the first day of Spring 2023. Who'd have thought it back in 1945 - - back in 1945, President Roosevelt was in his fourth term with just over three weeks to live before he complained, "I have a terrific headache" and suddenly fell dead of a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving us, it seemed that afternoon, leaderless in wartime; and World War Two was being waged with blazing fury over Japan and in the skies above and on the ground into G...

  For the hundred or so folks who've been reading my +Time blog from day to day, I'm letting be known that I'm taking a break, so don't be looking for it! Yesterday, and Tuesday of this week, and again this morning, I brought on a major goof up that is giving me second thoughts about myself and my alertness. I've not worked out what I did wrong, but here's what happened:  All three days I wrote lengthy blogposts that I was satisfied with and either posted or was "fixin' to post". Then in process of editing, or adding a picture, and updating, I did something that caused Blogger (the host) to delete most, half or two-thirds or more, of the blogpost I'd just finished working on for an hour or two. To have this happen three days in a row is so discouraging that I'm going to let it go for a while. It'll be further to my 2023 Lenten discipline, eh? My thought for the moment is that instead of the almost daily blogpost, I'll simply stick t...

So many things I want to say. Why? And What? What, but mainly Why? IDK, maybe like life events one could only discuss with a Navy buddy, but Why? Maybe BC they press to get out. IDK.  And yet, this is not the Time or place, is it. Breakfast: I like my breakfast real strange, nomesane? hot & black coffee, lox and cream cheese smeared on saltines and seasoned with mushroom soy sauce. If I were properly Jewish instead of barely able to struggle through an OT text one Hebrew letter at a Time, it'd be a bagel instead of saltines. But I don't eat bagels BC they're even more unhealthy for me than plain white bread.   Had Kristen's car maintenance, complete brake job front and rear, done at Precision at 23rd & Airport Rd instead of the agonizing trip to Sansing in Pensacola. Well, the drive over is good, and the BMW service is impressive, and the oysters and mullet are perfect, especially when Walt & Judy join us. But the drive back always turns out to be dusk an...