In the Christian Church today is kept as Holy Saturday. Actually, truthfully though, the day is seldom to never "kept" or even marked at all, but that's the name we give to the day: Holy Saturday. Centered between Good Friday and Easter Day, it's a day of silence, maybe a day of cutting flowers and bringing them to the cemetery to lay on the grave, outside the sealed tomb. If yesterday was a day of shock, this is a day of grief setting in, walking out through the cemetery gate to wander aimlessly down the road.  Maybe a day of contemplating how we humans treat each other. I appreciated the concluding words of Fr Rohr's meditation for today:  Armas invites us to consider:   What moments of sacred tension stand out in your life? What did they speak to you about your humanity?  If Holy Saturday makes me realize that there is sacred tension between my considered support for Israel and the child in the picture*, little more needs to be thought or said except that no ma...

  Thursday in Holy Week is Maundy Thursday, "maundy" from Latin mandatum, commandment, so Mandate Thursday" with Jesus giving his mandate or commandment, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” That's what it's all about. Jesus does this at the Last Supper in Gospel John's story, which is quite different from the Last Supper story in the synoptic gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Gospel John's full gospel story is below (scroll down), and I may get to it, but first I want to comment on the other Lectionary Proper readings for today.  First, The Collect does not mention Gospel John's version of the Last Supper, it's about the synoptics' version in which Jesus institutes, in our Tradition, our Christian sacrament of Holy Communion, which is also variously called The Mass, The ...

  A. "The upcoming hurricane season is looking explosive" says AccuWeather this morning. B. From the MiddleEast,  "Israeli forces hospital raid highlights Hamas's return to areas IDF says it has cleared." C. POLITICO, "Justices were skeptical of abortion pill arguments. Anti-abortion groups have backup  plans." D. AXIOS. "Religious service attendance across the U.S. is dropping." +++++++++ D: so, what else is gnu? Religious service attendance across the US has been dropping for decades, DECADES. Attendance plummeted during the COVID pandemic, people realized (1) that sleeping in Sundays was a real treat, and (2) that quitting church, which they had long wanted to do anyway but couldn't get up the courage, had been accomplished for them painlessly by pandemic isolation rules; and they weren't about to go back. ++++++++ B: Israel and the IDF had d well better stick to their determination to destroy Hamas and remove the existential threa...

  There is desperation and anxiety in my dreams, including waking just now from being a Navy commander in a room full of four star admirals, all of whom, each of whom, is demanding something different of me; each of whom, all of whom, I'm frantically trying to please and it isn't working.  Waking up greatly relieved, Whew, it was only a dream, glancing at the clock and sinking back to sleep into the same damned dream. Finally rising at quarter to three to start my day. Doing what? Writing my next sermon, for chrissakes, as I wonder about that frantic Navy commander and this retiring Episcopal priest.  WTFO, nomesane? What to do? What DO I do, what CAN I do besides write and preach sermons? That's my Wilderness Question: who and what am I? I'm getting rid of my black shirts and their cute little plastic white collars, my liturgical vestments, leaving behind all my stoles except a couple that have sentimental value; and going as far out into the desert as I can. To just B...

  Posting this Sunday evening for tomorrow morning. Good morning, Monday morning in Holy Week 2024, I intended to get a head start on my retirement-era Wilderness Retreat this morning, with my exercise plan for that Time and half-a-Time; but we are going to the eye center at Tyndall AFB, and any trip to Tyndall quickly becomes our "One Thing" for the day; and I get my exercise while we're there, returning home exhausted. Next Sunday, the last Sunday in March 2024, is Easter Day. Any Time a Christian is asked, "What's the greatest celebration of the church year?" the politically correct answer is Easter, because in the Resurrection, God loved us enough to get up and, forgiving us, come straight back to us no matter how viciously cruel we'd treated Him. But my answer is still and always Christmas, not only because it's more fun than Easter, but because theologically, God loved us enough to come in the first place.  Gazing out into the Universe and cont...

“Ἀληθῶς,” says the Roman centurion - “Ἀληθῶς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος υἱὸς θεοῦ ἦν” [Alēthōs houtos ho anthrōpos Huios Theou ēn]. Literally word for word in Saint Mark’s NT Greek syntax, “Truly this (the) human, son of God was.”  But you are not the Roman centurion: you are The Crowd.  The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday sets you up in a dichotomy of hypocrisy in which you welcome Jesus, waving palm branches and singing “Hosanna to the Son of David, hosanna in the highest heaven,” - - yet later you return to the scene with a pitchfork, a length of rope, a hammer and a handful of nails, shouting “Crucify him, crucify him.” Yes, you! Do you have any IDEA who this man was - - is? It’s not high school world history about something that happened long ago and far away. It’s here, now, today: you are in Jerusalem living the nightmare, and not as a spectator, but as a participant: Hosanna! Crucify him! Who was this man, who IS he? You welcomed him so warmly - - and now you scorn him with s...

  Frugal, I'm being frugal with my Coffee Club coffees, the bag for March just arrived, so I'm having a cup of hot & black in my magic mug that keeps it hot, every sip is an ongoing surprise that it's not going off cold.  For frugality, I'm making two cups: 8 ounces water and two scoops coffee, making one mug-full a day to make it last. I did that with the February bag and it lasted half again as long as my prior habit of making three cups, a mug and a half. The Coffee Club coffee is different every month, and noticeably tastier than the ordinary label bags of coffee we get at Bill's or Publix or the Commissary. Aldi's 500g packages of German coffees were an exception, but we've only been there a couple of Times.  Anyway, first mug of "Equator" blend coffees from Colombia, Sumatra, Kenya as my Coffee Club treat this morning - - sip'n hot. ++++++++++ For, it was 13 years last October, this blog has seen a daily or almost daily blogpost, whic...