Tuesday: stitches out
Sticky, maybe it's a fetish, but I cannot stand having sticky hands or fingers, and just looking at the brown bottle of Steen's 100% Pure Cane Syrup is making my fingers sticky. Fortunately, there's still hot coffee in my magic coffee mug, and I can dip my fingertips in there and dry them with a tissue.
Fifty years ago, at one of the places I worked during Navy years, we had an employee, a wary, skittish woman, who got up from her desk every few minutes to go to the washroom and wash her hands, there's a name for that phobia, but I don't have it, I just have to deal with sticky syrup now and then.
Today, for example. Linda baked cornbread yesterday before the Kelly family came over for noon dinner, so my Tuesday breakfast is two squares of cornbread, each covered with grated cheese and heated in the microwave. On top of my first square, Tabasco. On top of my second square, Steen's cane syrup. Hot & black with.
Okay, I'll wander a bit (so, what else is new?) - - in a restaurant if my fingers get sticky (very few American restaurants are so classy as to have finger bowls in front of diners, even if they've served you sticky finger food), I dip my napkin in my water glass and rinse my fingers, drying them on the dry end of the napkin. My fingers always get sticky eating fried mullet, because I pick it up to eat it. Same with fried chicken, fried oysters, scallops, shrimp. Thus, the finger washing routine.
Did you realize that hot, black coffee is the best thing for cleaning eyeglasses? No, really. Hot coffee and a clean handkerchief. I used to lick my eyeglass lenses, when they needed cleaning, then wipe them with the bottom edge of my white surplice vestment, but the last Time I did that was just before stepping into the pulpit, and I had been sucking on a cough drop, so that was a lesson.
Whitecaps everywhere across the Bay, wind from due North 17 mph, 90% humidity, 42°F and dropping. Going to be cold tonight, temp in the 20s. Which brings me naturally to my blogpost intention for this morning, the Collect and the Second Lesson for this coming Sunday:
"Eventually, there will come a time when you will be constantly complaining about the heat."
Collect
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Marion Hatchett (Commentary on the American Prayer Book) says this collect, written for the new (1979) book by the Rev Dr Massey P. Shepherd, Jr., reflects the theme of the readings for each of the three (Years A,B & C) Third Sundays after the Epiphany. For me, anytime I see the word "salvation" I wonder what the authors had in mind, and usually I think most of them had in mind immediate transfer at death, from earthly life to afterlife and streets of gold [[though Revelation's streets of gold scene is not above the sky, it's actually part of the New Jerusalem coming down to exist as God's kingdom on earth for the "saved"]], which is not at all what Paul visualized.
Dr Shepherd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massey_H._Shepherd was a brilliant scholar whom it would have been a blessing to study under; yet for all his brilliance he was a man of my parents' era, and possibly faith convictions, and I wonder what he visualized by the word "salvation" - - salvation into those singing around the heavenly throne, or salvation into Paul's vision of the coming end and total new creation, or salvation into the kingdom of God here and now? Does it matter? Well, it matters to me, but if it's important to you, then you have to decide for yourself.
In that regard, our NT reading for this coming Sunday has Paul writing on that topic:
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
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Maybe this passage reads a little weird, but that's only because it's lifted out of context, and it is on topic. Writing to the Corinthian church (in fact, starting with his letter that we have as 1 Thessalonians), Paul is convinced that the End of Days and General Resurrection began with the resurrection of Jesus. In Paul's view, Jesus' return (Second Coming) was imminent, would happen in his, Paul's lifetime. Jesus would return on the clouds, the dead would be raised and, along with the living, meet Jesus up in the air for judgment. Those judged positively would be "saved" into the new kingdom of God on earth (not into God's realm above the firmament), in which Jesus would return to reign. Many competent scholars say that what Paul believed about the coming End Time was also what Jesus believed, and there are passages in the Gospels to support their view.
How I feel about all this, including every Sunday standing to recite the Nicene Creed phrase, "... the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come" keeps me hopping (yes, that's "hopping" not "hoping"), keeps me thinking. Because I'm not one of these folks,
rather, I'm one of these folks
and Mark Twain or somebody wrote "faith is believing what you know damn well ain't so." I have to have peace of mind that what I believe religiously fits what I know of the world around me. What I know about Creation is far different to what Paul knew, and to what the framers of the Nicene Creed knew. And one of my favorite book titles is Phillips' "Your God Is Too Small." Some future generation or age will know far different to what I know too, so I'm humble about it - - I know nothing - - but I do live in a different era from that of the early church fathers. So, I have to do my own searching, thinking, seeking, and I'm not done yet.
I hope this helps.
RSF&PTL
T88&c
oh - - my title for this blogpost, stitches out this afternoon. I've had stitches out before, and I'm not looking forward to it. Comes to mind that January 2011 as part of my open heart surgery I had a tracheotomy. The day came for it to be removed, and I was given a shot of painkiller, which did not "take." Halfway through sewing my throat back together, the doctor asked, "Are you in pain?" I said, "Yes I am, your painkiller did not work, your sewing on my neck is excruciating." The doctor says, "Well, I only have a couple of stitches to go, so let's finish up."
I have had a very, very, very small taste of what folks, including children, are experiencing in Gaza, surgery without anesthesia.
Do you remember the scene in the movie "Gone With The Wind" of the field hospital surgery without anesthesia and the wounded soldier screaming as the surgeon began to saw off his leg, "No no, don't cut, don't cut"
Me, I'm a real chicken, I don't even like going back to have my stitches removed.