be thou my vision

 

See, life IS unfolding for us - - yesterday we walked around to the Farmers Market, which is set up every Saturday morning in Oaks by the Bay Park next door to Harbour Village. It was our first Time in IDK how long, maybe a couple of years, and the market has about doubled in size since our last visit, with twice as many peddlers' booths. 

We went looking for crookneck squash, which seem no longer available in grocery stories. Maybe Bill's Grocery Outlet once in a while. They are substantially different and better than what has come to be your grocer's usual, crooknecks are flavorful and not half water. Anyway, expecting not to find them but going anyway for the lovely morning, the walk and the exercise, a quarter mile there and a quarter mile back, there they were at a stand run by a couple from Marianna. 

The man said he grows them himself. Linda bought two of his large cartons and one small carton of crookneck squash, and spent the rest of the day preparing them to be ready for the squash casserole that's an essential Mom's Usual specialty at our family gatherings. Wash, slice, blanche and freeze. Two casseroles worth in the freezer, one casserole worth ready for us to have tomorrow or so; and for noon dinner, we had the two largest of them, sliced in two lengthwise, salt & pepper and baked in the oven, which was a favorite, frequent dish in our home the early years of our marriage.

Walking on, we found a farmers market booth offering fresh eggs for sale. Chicken eggs, duck eggs, turkey eggs. We love duck eggs, first Time in my life I've ever seen them for sale, but we bought a dozen and Linda will cook three, scrambled with cheese, for our Sunday morning breakfast today. As for the turkey eggs, it never occurred to me that anyone ever had turkey eggs for sale, but why not?! I googled, and read that they'e nearly twice as large as hen's eggs, thicker shells, a bit harder to crack, and in taste almost indistinguishable from hen's eggs; not extra rich like duck eggs. 

Knowing from experience that duck eggs keep very well in the fridge, we probably should have bought more than the one dozen carton of duck eggs from that vendor, in case she's not there with her stand next Saturday. Special friends introduced us to them, and they are a treat on Sunday morning before church.

Starting this blogpost Saturday evening as dozens of small boats race back across the Bay, returning from what I hope was a terrific holiday weekend adventure to Shell Island. This morning I watched them heading out into a beautiful day, and now here they are heading home. Not many sunburns, I pray. My experience, which would influence absolutely no teenager I've ever known, including myself back then, is that the cost of a nice tan every summer those years is, when you get into your eighties, little pieces of your ears and face being whittled away a couple Times a year. Was it worth it? Well, IDK, there are pieces of me missing, but I've not had a really bad dermatological cancer diagnosis so far.

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Friday, to celebrate School's Out with Kristen, we went to Fin's Japanese for sushi. They do a nice job, and each Time I have sushi I try to expand on my regulars of tuna and salmon, so had yellowfin nigiri and a salmon roe nigiri. Lovely presentation. 

Which reminds me of my introduction to raw fish sushi when we first moved to Japan in 1963: the group of Navy officers who were all lieutenants together those years used to go out to a local restaurant for noonday lunch break. It was always either off base to a backstreet Japanese restaurant where we had katsu, delicious pork cutlets and rice; or to the officers club for something light that ended with an enormous dish of vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate syrup. A highlight of that memory is listening to Cassius Clay float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, and do his rope-a-dope.  

One day we changed and went to a sushi restaurant outside the main gate. I'd never had sushi, and was appalled to see raw fish of many kinds being served and consumed. Everyone ordered tuna or salmon nigiri and rolls except Gary, who preferred sashimi, which is thin slices of the raw fish without the rice. The idea turned me off until I remembered all my years growing up working in a fish market, when I would open the iced display case and help myself, one at a Time, to raw oysters from the gallon tin bucket that was there for doling out pints, half-pints, and quarts of oysters for customers. 

And the years when Walt and I would open a five-gallon tin of salt mullet, pull strips of meat from the packed fish, and eat them - - salty and tasty. 

The memories sold me, and I ordered the sushi selection. It was a great new experience except that one nigiri was a slice of raw octopus, the suction cup on a little thumb-size cake of rice. I was new to Japan at the Time, all the other officers had been there for some months or a year or so, and enjoyed watching me chew and chew and chew and finally just give up and swallow the octopus bite. I may have had a bottle of Kirin to help wash it down.

From ensign at age 22 to commander at 35 and retiring at 42, I always had enviable Navy assignments. The destroyer was best, but our three years in Japan hold mostly happy memories. Well, the second tour in WashDC was good. And the schools, Univ of Michigan and Navy War College. Have I ever missed the Navy? Not yet, and last February 1st I had been retired forty-six years. I loved being a parish priest too, but Life is Good and I'm movin' on!
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Today is Trinity Sunday. The late Rev Dr Robert Jenson, my seminary theology professor, liked to ask, "Who or What is God?" and he would answer, "God is whoever or whatever led Israel out of Egypt. God is whoever or whatever Jesus called 'Abba, Father.' God is whoever or whatever raised Jesus from the dead." 

My own responses would include, "God is whoever or whatever, in the beginning, said 'Let there be,' and it was so. And, God is whoever or whatever God says God is, in and as God's Word." You can develop your own perceptions. In today's liturgy the proper preface in the Eucharistic Prayer will say of God, "For with thy co-eternal Son and Holy Spirit, thou art one God, one Lord, in Trinity of Persons and in Unity of Substance; and we celebrate the one and equal glory of thee, O Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." That theological assertion does not seem to address the God perceived in Judaism or Islam.

Who or What is God? We like to say that God reveals God's self to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But "Shema, Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echod, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." So, does the One God reveal God's self differently to others? If we say "NO," can our limited vision bind and limit God?

We can say that God is grace, which is unconditional love, and all powerful, but the theodicy issue calls us up short on that premise. 

Anyway, Trinity Sunday.


RSF&PTL
T88&c