Thursday walkabout
To any loyal son, of course, Mom's Usual was the best ever. I don't remember Mama's egg salad, though, and it doesn't really matter, because Linda makes the world's best egg salad and the world's best stuffed eggs. This morning's breakfast: egg salad on Pepperidge Farm extra thin whole wheat bread. I don't know the ingredient mix, but mayonnaise, capers, six hens' eggs and one duck egg. OMG.
Really, I shouldn't be telling about Linda's great cooking, as it'll only encourage that guy, whoever he is, who rings Linda's phone every morning to ask hopefully, "Hi, Babe! I pray Father made it through the night again, but if he didn't, are you free for lunch?"
Give it up, man.
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I'd never waste a duck egg by frying one, but duck eggs make for exquisitely rich scrambled cheese eggs for Sunday morning breakfast.
Still, as I say, this is not a food blog.
POD today. Patience while the Aleve takes charge and makes life walkable again, some business online, then across the street to Alice's for clergy & friend lunch. Linda will go along as my friend.
What do I order at Alice's? Had the meatloaf blue-plate special once, it was fine; usually I have a small salad and two orders of fried oysters on the side. Each order has seven fried oysters. I'm suspicious of ordering a grouper sandwich anywhere but Bayou Joe's though, because often what you get is not grouper but a thin fillet of some little fish like swai, as though I'm some alphabet Yankee who don't know nothing about Gulf seafood, nomesane? I'm not one to make an ugly scene when what's not grouper is set down in front of me, so I take no chances: when I want grouper I buy black grouper at Tarpon Dock and we cook it here in 7H.
From age nine through age seventeen I grew up working in a fish market, and I knew better than to bring red grouper home for Mama to cook, because it was always full of worms, and I had to cut them out before Mama would even look at it. Black grouper didn't so much have the parasites.
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Jiminy Jeepers, Bubba, get a grip.
Sunday, May 19, 2024: the Day of Pentecost, one of the seven major feast days of the church year. Did you realize that major feast days are bunched up every spring? Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday. The other three, All Saints, Christmas, and Epiphany are late fall and winter festivals.
Anyway, Pentecost. Forty years ago when I was the rector I liked to begin the Pentecost service with the acclamation, "When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you shall receive power - - and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth!"
And then break into the hymn "Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest, vouchsafe within our souls to rest," in one of our praise-song books in those wonderful years of charismatic renewal in the church. More than a generation gone now, but happy memories of joyful worship in our churches in Pennsylvania and Apalachicola.
At any event, here's the lectionary gospel reading for this coming Sunday:
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
Jesus said to his disciples, ”When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."
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Unless I miscounted, Jesus speaks the word "truth" three Times in this gospel passage. It always, ALWAYS takes me to Jesus before Pilate, their conversation, John 18:37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
38 “What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him. ..."
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Truth. "What is truth?" Pilate's question is the challenge of my own life: what is truth? In a more naive but I suppose more clear and certain Time of life, I preached that Pilate in his innocence was looking at Truth personified even as he asked the question. Pilate retorted, but one man's retort is another man's challenge.
Time and aging and the ongoing challenge from the sign in the lintel over the library door at my Episcopal seminary, "SEEK THE TRUTH, COME WHENCE IT MAY, COST WHAT IT WILL" I have found indeed, my search for Truth extremely costly.
A search for Truth that has integrity does not end with choosing one's preferences, nor one's hopes, nor what has been received, nor, for me, being content with a leap of faith; but in dangling over a precipice with more questions than answers. Perhaps a blogpost for another Time. Or even another lifetime.
RSF&PTL
T88&c