If

 

45°F outside and going to 43° by sunrise in a few hours. To a NW Florida native, it's chilly, almost cold. Wind is 11 mph from the north, the other side of the condo building, the Beck Avenue side, and not felt at all on 7H porch at the moment. Here with hot & black and a treat, which is unusual, a little sliver of seed bread end slice, mayo, extra sharp cheddar, a strip of bacon left over from Sunday breakfast, and the other half of the cheese slice on top, quite tasty. I didn't eat bacon for years, until Linda started cooking it because Caroline & Charlotte liked it, and nowadays we have it sometimes as a Sunday breakfast treat. 

Already been up half an hour: this early and earlier rising with advancing age, I really enjoy it. If at this age it hits you as it is hitting me, I hope you appreciate it as much as I do: life is short, and we haven't much Time, and I'll take all I can get, because for all our material greed and I-want-its, Time is all we have.

The pause in Israel Gaza is extended a bit, giving most everyone there a bit more Time in their nightmare. A little girl is freed but her parents were murdered. A teenager is freed from, what? a 20 year prison sentence for throwing rocks. In Vermont, of all places, three college students* are shot by an ignorant rabid hater with a hand gun.

America should have special constitutional provisions for people who use their constitutional rights irresponsibly to violate the rights of others; including, in certain circumstances such as this one, loss of all constitutional rights. 

Why are people so mean? Because it's our nature - - which makes me most extremely uneasy about Genesis 1:27: who is in whose image and likeness? Who and/or What is God - - like? It depends on one's religion, which of course only intensifies the question. Is God like us, or are we like God? Who says so, us, or God? Again, from Cove School grammar class, it's a predicate adjective, and even a simple algebra equation. 

Yul Brynner is long dead, but it's a puzzlement, because ingrained pious religious sensitivities won't let us honestly examine what it is that we have created or that has created us. Whoever or Whatever God is or may be must be constantly chagrined about the theologies we espouse: is God like the Lord Sabaoth of Joshua, or is God like the Lamb that was slain? If the Lamb, the Lamb of Gospel John or the Lamb of Revelation John? And it's not unrelated to the problem of theodicy: If God is all powerful and all loving, why is there such suffering? Every "acceptable" answer only serves to rationalize God off the hook; a Seek The Truth Come Whence It May Cost What It Will answer is deeply unsettling because it challenges the question itself: If. 

If you can't see the issue and problem, so much the better, because it only needs to distress me, you don't need to upset yourself, and I don't mean to upset you; but this is my blog. 

Time for my second mug of hot & black, then perhaps a return to bed. Linda and I have plans for Tuesday, places to go and people to see, and I need to be well rested before the bugle sounds. Or the trumpet.

RSF&PTL

T88&c

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* These three boys are graduates of the Friends school in Ramallah. The Friends, Quakers, are Christians, and the school seems to be run in the same loving way as our Holy Nativity Episcopal School. I went on line to the school's website and found the boys' names listed among alumni.