lightning free, whirling wind, stable Earth
Hey, I showed up again, thank you, God! Sunday 18 June 2023. 202306180410 CDT, Panama City, Florida.
Five-twenty-two, five-twenty-three o'clock, grim and dark Saturday afternoon out here on 7H porch, frequent thunder drawing closer, raining across the Bay and heading this way. Cannot see Shell Island or the Tyndall Bridge behind the white wall. Wind in the palm trees makes it sound like the rain is already here, but it's not. Soon though, frogs croaking, anticipating. Between me and Red Fish Point sits a tug with two barges, waiting to ease into the oil terminal. Flash of lightning followed by a sharp boom that shakes the atmosphere. A hymn verse surfaces, floating through my awareness,
I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun's life-giving ray;
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks, The stable earth, the deep salt sea around the old eternal rocks.
The stable earth? I don't think so, not as sure as I was seventy years ago when I first remember singing that Trinity hymn.
More flashes, thunder crashing closer. Now an instantaneous flash/boom. Maybe go inside, eh? We've experienced here when, out on the porch, a streak of lightning can be felt, its electricity in the air and on the skin. Am I safe here under the porch roof? Maybe. I think this condo building is loaded with lightning rods or whatever, to keep us safe. Well, safer than without them.
An osprey pauses above me, hovering just off 7H porch rail, eyeing me, flying on with that piercing shriek that's their identifying call. Speaking of, I've not checked the osprey chicks in Colorado lately.
Wow, they're huge since I last looked. Close watchers reported they're crawling around the nest, over to Mom for fish, over to the edge to peer out at the pond.
We live in a strange Creation, don't we, on a planet that isn't all that friendly or welcoming toward us; yet, as Darwin worked out, we're developing in accommodation with it and in spite of all it throws at us, as both we and it continue to evolve.
Genesis 1:26-27 is ever in mind, where the P Writer must have thought we were done, finished, perfect in the divine image and likeness; but surely that's not so. Or, if that IS the case, we need seriously to contemplate our notions about God: IDK, maybe God really is still like that fellow in Israel's Heilsgeschichte who worked so closely with Joshua, nomesane? that's unsettling, a scary thought. If your answer to nomesane? is NO, then you need to read the OT Book of Joshua.
Nothing is normal any more, culture, human relations, not even the weather, Father Nature trying to get the best of us as we use up Earth's resources and turn against each other. But also, I'm thinking maybe Earth's always been changing like this, and we just think normal is how things were in a moment of Time when we assumed everything had always been like it was at that moment in our memory.
As a metaphor, this is what happens when there are too many rats, turning on and destroying each other, an instinct of nature to reduce the population to where it can be sustained. In fact, recently someone wrote that humans are bringing on the next mass extinction event, and I suppose that could be true, eh? Will we use up the Earth or decimate it ourselves before the sun explodes or that meteorite hits? Or the super volcano erupts.
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Earlier ...
Languages: as well as all the usual joys and interests of being born human - 20th & 21st century AD, male, White, American, Southerner, Florida Gulf Coast native, retired, reasonable appetite, health and prospects, happy and still alive on a lovely but deteriorating Saturday morning - one of my interests in life has been languages, foreign languages.
Japanese, for example. I never learned to read and/or write Japanese (they actually had three different written languages, and the best I could do at the Time was tell which of the three a given writing, notice, sign, or other was written in). And unlike English, German, Greek, Latin that I've fooled around with in my years, each Japanese character is not a letter, but a word. A word picture actually. Thousands of them to learn and know: there must be a key, a trick to recognizing one from another?
I did notice in Japan, though, that even the Japanese cars on the streets had their brand names and model names spelled out in English instead of Japanese characters. A popular Japanese luxury car when we lived in Japan was a full size sedan or station wagon marked "Toyopet Crown". I don't know whether Japanese cars sold in Germany or France or Spain or other have brand and model names spelled out in the local language, or they're all in English.
Anyway, the Navy stationed us in Japan 1963-1966, where newly arrived officers were required to take an introductory course in the Japanese language, which was fun, and I absorbed enough for daily greetings and to shop, and to get us anywhere by train and around Tokyo by taxicab - - the little mostly Datsun (later renamed Nissan) sedans that crowded the streets, though some were Toyopet (later renamed Toyota). One of the things that intrigued me about Japanese is that, unlike us speaking English or any of the other languages I've fooled with, the Japanese language has the spoken equivalent of ? a question mark. The sound is "ka" か (ka) and when spoken at the end of a sentence it makes the sentence a question. Like, nomesane ka か (ka)? It's very handy.
A peculiarity of spoken Japanese, we were taught and I observed there, is that syllables are not emphasized in words, such that words and speaking can sound flat. I was stationed in Yokosuka, for example, and it's not pronounced yo-ko-SU-ka as one might expect, but yo-kos'-ka. And Hiroshima is not hi-ro-SHEE-ma as we normally say, but hi-rosh'-ma.
Which highlights another characteristic, silenced vowels. In words that (spelled out in English) contain "su" syllables, you just say the "sss" sound and the ooo sound is left silent; as above, Yokosuka is pronounced "yokos'ka". And in words with "shi" you say the "sh" but the "I" is not sounded, again as above "Hirosh'ma." The area, prefecture that was especially hard hit by the earthquake and catastrophic tsunami is spelled Fukushima, but pronounced "Fukush'ma." Needless to say, this spelling is giving my spell-check fits.
Japanese workers leaving the office would always bid each other "Ittekimasu" which to me always sounded like "Ticky Mouse" because the "I" wasn't heard, and the "masu" was pronounced "mas" with silent "u" sound.
And sentence structure is not the same as English. For example, a question like, "Are you American?" would end in "desu ka" with desu (the verb "is") pronounced des' and the "ka" making the statement a question. The answer might be, "Hai, so desu" meaning Yes, that's correct. Or, "So ja nai" meaning, "That's not true"
Sixty years later, Linda and I still have and use several household expressions that we picked up as habits in Japan. They are so natural and ingrained that I can't even think of them now. One might be, like, "ikimasho" which means, sort of impatiently, "let's go, hurry up". Or, "domo" which means "thanks". The Japanese expression that sounds like "chotto matay" means, like, "just a moment", usually cut to "chotto" or sometimes "chotto matay, kudasai" meaning "just a minute, please." And if I miss what Linda says to me I'll ask, "Nan, des' ka?" which is to say, "What?"
It's fun to be immersed in a foreign language long enough to pick up and adopt at least bits of it, or even dialects. Said here before, forty and more years ago my business involved traveling to Australia, and also frequent visits to the Australian embassy in Washington, DC. One Time, having been in Australia a month or so, I was at a cocktail party at a Navy officers' club in Sydney and an officer in uniform asked me, "Weren't we at the Naval College together?" When I said, "No, I'm an American," he scoffed, "You're not American, you don't have an American accent." And that trip or another, returning from five weeks or so working in Australia among Australian defense industry colleagues, I arrived home - - talking to Linda that evening, she stopped me, "I can't understand you. You're speaking Australian."
Unconsciously, I pick up others' sounds. Maybe in some prior life I was a mockingbird. A parrot.
So, Japanese language lesson for today. Mind, I teach you everything I know, and still you know nothing.
At this age, German and Hebrew are my favorite tongues to fool around with. NT Greek, not so much.
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Sunday, Fathers Day. Canon to the Ordinary is to visit us at church this morning to talk about our upcoming transition period. My steak is ready to go into the cast iron skillet, which I will heat to searing hot soon as I walk in the door from church. And my baked potato - - I picked out the LARGEST baking potatoes at Bill's, which is what we call Grocery Outlet, biggest ones for myself, Linda and Kristen. A lump of butter, sprinkle of grated cheese, and a dollop of sour cream, mayo, & onion soup mix
And there is/are good news. (1) Tomorrow, God willing (wishing you long years), we are to drive up to Bonifay to get Malinda and return her to Pruitt. (2) the new air conditioning in the 2013 Volvo XC60 that we bought for Kristen ten years ago when she was at Emory, and that I have now inherited as my car, having given my SRX V8 to Joe, will freeze your toes off, frigidly cold a/c. (3) Life is Good, Better, Best.
RSF&PTL
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