Just before pressing "Publish" recently, I paused to check into someone I had quoted, then scrapped the +Time blogpost draft when I discovered he was not at all someone with whom I would wish to be associated in anyone's mind, especially my own. In that case, it was a religious kook. Have you ever noticed that you need to check out the biography and qualifications of authors whom you are inclined to cite? I find it especially so in Bible scholarship and religious writings, because sometimes even reasonable views are taken by real cuckoos. It's the case also in the social and political arenas. So, I try to be careful about who I quote.  Whom I quote.  It applies today in the below (scroll down) essay by an Israeli writer. But I've checked him out and decided to go ahead.   Before going there, what do I long for in American politics? Something that makes sense - - the Eisenhower Stevenson days - - the Kennedy Nixon years - - even the Dewey Truman times. An era in ...

  As the weather moves through and on off to the east, my phone keeps doing its cute little ring-a-ling notification of lightning strikes in the area. Glad this rainy, stormy weather is today and not yesterday when Norm was driving over from Opelika. We had a great visit and sea stories. Lunch at Harrison's on the downtown marina, wasn't crowded, perfect for sitting and talking, the shrimp bangers were just right, and the fish sandwich was too once smeared with extra mayonnaise. I'd at first decided to take him up to Steam on 5, the open air fifth floor rooftop restaurant at the Indigo Hotel, but the heat index was over 100°F so no. At any age a get together is always a possible Last Time, but "my friends, life is short and we haven't much Time" is Captain Obvious when, friends for more than fifty years, two long-retired Navy officer octogenarians reminisce and it is to laugh.  ++++++++ Announcement yesterday that our Interim Rector is scheduled to arrive the ...

Teacher, the vocation to teach children, young people, and young adults, is the highest calling in human life and it's come to crisis that so many teachers are quitting the classroom. Teachers' low pay is a shame of our civilization, but that doesn't seem to be the main reason so many teachers are leaving. It has to do with all sorts of issues, including attitude, respect, attention, commitment and interest, and all manner of things that flowed out of the covid upset. I pray there will be a way back, but I'm only optimistic for schools such as our own Holy Nativity where there is enthusiasm, love, respect, participation and support as well at home as on campus.  "The Conversation" is one of the regulars into my email inbox, scroll down, their Lead Story one morning recently is more focused on what's happening in the journalism field, but it includes teachers and other vocations that serve people and the community.  I think that's what I'll have to ...

King David was never accused of having a 21st century C.E. sense of right and wrong, of justice, ethics, or common human decency. Those he loved, he loved deeply and mourned agonizingly, memorably his son Absolom. But the story of David and Bathsheba is unspeakably shameful, as is the story of David reclaiming his wife Michel the daughter of king Saul, whom David did not love and did not want anything of her but his "rights" and put her aside, shunned. The name David ד ו ד is conjectured to mean Beloved, and David indeed was beloved of God. The story below, [[of which my added material in brackets shows that the lectionary framers cut off the core of it lest we be faced with David's cruelty]], is another example of an entitled man.  Somehow all the anyhow, God loved David more than any other character in the Old Testament. God was old drinking buddies with Abraham, who passed his wife Sarah off as his sister so that when the king wanted her for himself, instead of killing...

Whether to wander into and ramble through a new post today, this morning - - ? - - ? - - lately my morning walk has taken me down to G and out the garage gate that opens into the pool area. Sign on the gate reads "Pool Tags Required" but I'm not going in the pool, I'm walking, and I didn't bring a pool tag. Owners wear a blue pool tag, others red.  Sometimes across the pool area, out the west side gate that reads "Pool Tags Required" and on down the bayside boardwalk to one or the other ramp (yes, ramp, pushing my red convertible - - it's convertible because it's a safety device that serves both as a walker so I don't fall, and as a chair) up another ramp, through the enclosed "wind tunnel" where the west lobby is, the west mailroom, and the front door to the clubroom, out onto the higher level bayside boardwalk outside the clubroom, to one of the tables and sit down.  Look out across StAndrewsBay into the Pass. Now and then a ship ...

  Looking east toward Tyndall Bridge, we watched the orange, huge-appearing full moon rise last evening. And now I'm watching out my 7H window here in the living room, across the Bay beyond Magnolia Beach, as,  between Bay Point and high-rise condominiums on Thomas Drive,  still large but pale yellow, it sinks into gray hazy clouds over the Gulf of Mexico. Two little birds pausing on our porch rail, one trying to impress the other.  Interesting casual reading yesterday, half a dozen or so essays from various sources. One about soda crackers, which I remember my father calling them, but saltine crackers has stuck, saltines. They make a good base for lots of food bites without changing their taste. Raw oysters from a pint container (raw oysters from half-shell I don't want nothin' between the oyster and my tongue, not even a saltine), smear of cheese, slice of German liverwurst from Aldi's, a spoon of strawberry preserves. We like the Schwartau brand strawberry ja...

  What did Saint Paul look like? There are suppositions about his homely face and gnarled limbs,  but we really have no idea.  How about David, King David? From the Old Testament passage that was our First Lesson last Sunday morning, we're told something of what David looked like, "he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome" - - interesting that the writer of the Books of Samuel finds David's looks remarkable, considering that in the same lesson he'd had Samuel say that the Lord only looks on the inside - -  I call baloney on that, considering that God's selection and Samuel's anointing of King Saul before David also involved a remarkably tall, handsome young man. Further, the story of Mephibosheth, a son of David's friend Jonathan and the grandson of King Saul, Israel's first king. When Saul and his sons died in battle at Mount Gilboa, Mephibosheth was only five years old. His nurse picked him up and was fleeing, but in her haste she d...

  A few weeks ago, a very dear person at church brought Linda a gardenia blossom, and the thoughtful kindness of it ignited the memory of a gardenia bush we had at The Old Place. Seven or eight feet high, huge to walk around, late spring into summerTime it would cover itself with blooms, filling life with its fragrance.  The next morning we went to Lowe's garden shop, found and bought four different varieties of gardenias in pots. One especially quickly filled out with blooms and fragrance, then another, and three of them sort of phased through the next several weeks. Right now, one plant has two new flowers, keeping the porch faintly sweet. Another of the plants was named "August Gardenia," which we hope will mean more blooms late this summer.  Of which, today is summer equinox 2024, first "official" day of summer. Eighty years ago this morning I would have been loving life while watching the calendar wistfully as summer vacation slipped by. How could life have...