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 jam from t

  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

  Juneteenth, Wednesday 19 June 2024 and my third day into the Wilderness, trekking on to let the desert find me. Books to read, magazines to read, hot & black to sip and cheese to nibble - - this morning on crackers, Sweet Grass Dairy's Green Hill, a soft ripened double cream cow's milk cheese.  But the desert: I'm 19 minutes into an online 3 hour and 41 minute read through the Book of Enoch. If you've not read Enoch, give it a miss, take a pass and take credit for Uncle Bubba having read it in your name, as the Pharisees made a scrupulousness of keeping every aspect and facet of the Law so that other Jews might go about their daily lives. Trust me, you do not need to read Enoch, I've got your back, using my desert space and Time to cover you. It's not likely to be one of the questions anyway.  ++++++++++ Anu Garg's word for today is balderdash, probably not much use for it; but his thought for today bears minding, as it pretty much says it all: A THOUG

  Below (scroll down) is the gospel reading appointed for the upcoming Sunday, June 23. Except for five Sundays in July and August when our gospel readings will be from John chapter 6, the Bread of Life, we'll be reading through Mark the rest of the summer and fall 2024; and we will see the development of Mark's agenda that his disciples, including The Twelve, the people nearest Jesus cannot see who he is. Sometimes they look really dumb, but that's only because Mark has already told us the readers who Jesus is.  In Sunday's reading, called a "nature miracle," Jesus calms a storm at sea and those in the boat with him puzzle, "Who is this, that even wind and sea obey him?" We may think, "well, duh!" But it isn't that the disciples are stupid, it's that the Bible student has to get in Mark's mind and see what Mark is doing, Mark's agenda. The story is not about obtuse disciples, Mark is using the disciples' perfectly norma

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sitting here Sunday afternoon of Fathers Day receiving news flashes about lightning nearby and hearing distant thunder, watching the gray sky darken to black as the whatever-it-was that tried to become a tropical system but never managed to get it together circles in over us from the Gulf. It may not show on the still screenshot, but in motion it's circling ashore counterclockwise, a low of sorts and a threat lest we relax.  Sixteen days into Hurricane Season 2024 we're warming up and getting there. We've made a list and checked it twice and shopped the things we should have in Linda's car in event of hurricane evacuation. Main thing is a case of bottled water, but we've gathered other recommended articles as well.  Where would we go? Depends on the situation including forecasted track. Most every household has their hurricane history, ours in this iteration of life goes back nearly forty years to summer 1985, when we had three hurrica

A nice crowd at both services this morning. For what it's worth, my homiletic endeavor is below, I tried to relax and so did a lot of ad-libbing in both sermons at both services, so any resemblance between lip and print is intentional.  Reminded that our homiletics (preaching) professor at theological seminary told us two key things. (1) never print your sermons after you preach them; and if you cannot avoid printing them, make sure that what you print is what you intended to say and should have said, rather than what you actually did say (however, the electronic age has completely overrun that escape mechanism); and (2) never brag to your congregation that you had to fight with the text all week long, because they will always see that you struggled with the text and lost. I did fight with this text all week, and my purpose was not to win, but to get Jesus out of a corner that Mark had painted Him into, it's your call how well or bad I did, eh?  My supervising rector for my tra