what Abraham thought

 

Up and about at 3:12, check outside, 52°F and clear, Wind N 1 mph, 77% humidity. Thursday off to a fine start. 

This is our late winter here in the Florida Panhandle on the Gulf Coast. Something I read earlier in the week predicted an extraordinarily fierce hurricane season, starting early and especially violent in the second half. Where to go, what to do if H.Michaelsdottr comes ashore here? 

The only thing sure is that I can sip my hot & black without its going off cold. Coffee Club for February - - to make it last more than a couple weeks I've shifted from making three cups to making two cups. CHF, to help get legs and weight down I've started Furo40 daily instead of "as needed" and trying to be more mindful of salt intake. The tomato juice and Clamato don't help. Nor does soaking my sushi in soy sauce. 

Francie: the kind butcher gave her a thick slice of liverwurst; at the other shop, the vicious butcher cursed every word she uttered. As did the old Jew at the pickle shop, hating Goyem, fishing a pickle from the bottom of the vat for Francie, then returning to his dreams of the old country: how do we know what he dreamed of? The author tells us, it's the author's story, and the author tells us - - 

which is a trick to remember in Bible study when the E Writer or J Writer tells us what Abraham thought to himself: what did Abraham think? He thought whatever the author of Genesis 17 says he thought. What does Tom Sawyer say? Tom Sawyer says whatever Mark Twain says Tom said. Just so, read, mark, learn, enjoy, inwardly digest, and contemplate Bible stories realizing that you're not reading high school world history, but Heilsgeschichte, a holy story. 

In that regard, here's our OT Bible story for the upcoming Sunday, Lent 2 Year B:

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, יְהוָ֜ה the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty [Hebrew, El Shaddai] walk before me, and be blameless. 2 And I will make my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous.”3 Then Abram fell on his face, and אֱלֹהִ֖ים God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be their God.”

15 God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her and also give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” 17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”

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Why do we not read Genesis 17:8? Why do you think?! Because it mixes into current affairs, the Jewish claim to the Palestinian's land. This is Heilsgeschichte for Israel and the Jewish people, it is NOT a story accepted by the Canaanites, today called Palestinians. Who has the right to the land? It depends on whose story you believe. Generally speaking, literalist inerrantist fundamentalist Christians accept the Genesis story of the Promised Land, but the Palestinian claim is more ancient.

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That's not where I was going when I set the dancing fingers loose. In mind was my CHF, which, progressive, is asserting control; ; thus increased Furo mindfulness in this my 89th year.  

And it's Time to reorder Vertisil.

The life of a late-octogenarian. 

Book Two "Tree" backing up twelve years. Francie's mom-to-be, age 17, with her eye on Francie's dad-to-be, age 19. Brooklyn, 1900. Brooklyn: I had a job offer there in January 1978 as I was retiring from the Navy - - what if? The what-iffing is fun, and always makes me feel like a near-Brooklynite. All of it takes me back to listening as Robert Frost read poems to us at UF in the early 1950s and realizing that the most significant aspect of life is encountering diverging roads in the yellow wood, and choosing.

Wandering again

RSF&PTL

T88&c

Pic: thanks to a friend!