keeping Promises
Ahhh, the delight of a rush of warm, damp Florida Gulf Coast air when sliding open the 7H porch door these early summer mornings. Brings back, years ago when we were living in central Pennsylvania, the years 1978 to 1984 when I was teaching a couple of graduate courses at the University of West Florida, knowing and loving that I was Home with my first breath of salt air.
Stepping out of the airplane when the University had flown me down, opening the car window when I had driven down.
Leaving Florida and returning home to Pennsylvania was never easy those years after Navy retirement when I was working my personal business full Time, traveling and away from home seventy-five or eighty percent of my Time, going to theological seminary full Time; and wondering when we'd be able to keep our long Navy years' promise to return Home to Florida permanently in Time.
And at last for my personal all-Time, in July 1984 when we finally relocated from Harrisburg to Apalachicola and I was Home to stay, swearing my unbroken vow: I will never again live out of sight and smell of salt water, or north of Highway US-98.
And my vow that dates to a dark, early winter 1969 morning in Newport, Rhode Island when I'd finally shoveled my car out of the snow bank, thawed the car door lock enough to get inside, and started the reluctant engine, sitting inside the freezing car, myself frozen numb, swearing never again to complain about getting into a hot, humid car on a summer afternoon in Florida.
I take the Episcopal Church's baptismal vows from Time to Time, but my personal vows are centered on the Florida Gulf Coast and St Andrews Bay.
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Looking at the gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday morning, 16 June,
Proper 6, Year B Mark 4:26-34
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
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April 28 I thought I'd preached my final sermon, but here I go one more Time again. Maybe I'll preach from that Mark chapter 4 gospel reading, eh? And though it's not a promise, I'll try to keep it short.
RSF&PTL
T88&c