While developing ideas to encourage and help further parish growth years ago, I came across a half-jest line or cartoon that grumbled, "Everybody who should be an Episcopalian already is one." Anyone who's lifetime been one understands the subtlety of the humor, nobody else could even begin to get the private insider semi-joke; and although I never felt that way as a priest in my struggling little parishes, as I look back seventy and more years, my rule for myself in my teen years was only to be friends with girls who were Episcopalians.  Was it a snob thing? IDK, but I don't think so, I think it was more in line with "lead us not into temptation." Would I recommend it for others? I hardly dare admit it outside my own mind, but it's a personal example that helps me understand my observation that people only like and want to be with folks who are like themselves; a human trait that is destroying civilization with division, bitterness and hatreds. Jesus ...

Joe arrived from Louisville KY via Apex NC on Monday afternoon, and we had a good visit. He left after noon dinner at one o'clock Thursday, yesterday, and arrived Tallahassee at three o'clock. Leaves this morning, Friday, on his way to Apex NC, Sunday to Winston-Salem and Monday back to Louisville. Fifteen years ago, April 2009, Joe's Patty died, and it's just Joe now. He's an engineer with a firm in Louisville, a city that he enjoys and appreciates. I should have got a picture of his motorcycle, but didn't even think of it, so these are other pics I've especially enjoyed lately. A new calf. An earlier calf whom I found adorable in trusting, innocent, oblivious naïveté.  Remember the Chevy Citation? Its corporate siblings in the GM X-car series included the Pontiac Phoenix and a model for both Oldsmobile and Buick, but not for Cadillac. The press in those days was to come up with something gas-efficient that people would find appealing enough to drive. +++++...

Maybe a quickie blogpost before I get back into my can't-put-down book that Joe brought, "Ghosts of Honolulu" by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. Fascinating to learn stuff including the years, months and days leading up to December 7, 1941 that make it obvious that "Let's Remember Pearl Harbor" did not have to happen as it did; though I don't think the battleships we had at the Time, before USS Missouri and the three others of that IOWA class, could have blasted the Japanese battle fleet out of the water. Six, I was six years old and as innocent as any first-grader. What do I remember about that Time in my life? Well, the Labor Day 1941 sit-down at the dining room table with Mama when I reluctantly began the evolution into my twelve-year identity as Carroll. The first few minutes in Ms Violet Heyward's class at Cove School, when the teacher had me kick at a yardstick to determine that I would thenceforth be right-handed instead of somewhat ambidext...

  My favorite saint, although I've not given a lot of thought to it, might be Francis of Assisi, not necessarily as he actually was in real life, I don't know about that; but as he is expressed in the lives and religion of the Franciscans, to my knowledge as modeled by Fr Richard Rohr; and also as Pope Francis, himself a Jesuit, has encouraged the Church to become, starting with his choosing of his name.  Religion is not The Thing, The End, the purpose of religion is not to be "saved" and avoid "excommunication" by claiming to believe certain doctrines and dogma, but to live life in a certain way, which is specifically The Way of the Cross, a life of love and sacrifice for others; "love" in the sense of the NT Greek word agape, which is Unconditional Kindness toward All, especially the "Samaritans" of our lives; "sacrifice" in the sense of giving up one's "rights" as necessary so that others may live and love.  Tha...

Our son Joe is on his way down on his motorcycle, expecting to arrive about five or six o'clock this evening. From Louisville, Kentucky where he lives, he rode over to Apex, North Carolina to visit Lauren and Ashlee over the weekend, is to be here for a few days, Thursday to Tallahassee to visit TJCC, maybe go to the stadium to watch Charlotte and her trumpet practice with The Marching Chiefs (Go 'Noles) then head back north Friday morning.  Our plans for Joe's visit include a couple of nice meals, going to Pruitt to see Malinda, maybe eating out at a local seafood restaurant. Joe usually has liked to ride out to St Andrews State Park at The Pass just out of our sight from here the other side of Courtney Point, memories of Patty there. Sometimes he visits with an old friend from when they were at Gulf Coast College back in their twenties, Joe is sixty-three, turns sixty-four in November.  I remember the night he was born. We were living in Neptune Beach, I was stationed at ...

  Early Sunday morning, but not early enough: having decided yesterday to go to the eight o'clock service at Holy Nativity this morning, Father Nature thwarted that with an oversleep such that we've changed plans to attend the ten-thirty service.  I don't think it was God telling us to go to the later service, but it reminds me that back in 1978 I had a small hobby-type business in which I could order cars at dealer invoice price, basically "cost" and a woman had phoned me to order a new 1978 Chevrolet, a red sedan of such and such specifications. The next day she called to say Jesus didn't want her to have a red car, so she had to change to a different color.  Maybe your religion works that way, I don't think mine does; although I had a sense of "vocation" to ordained ministry starting from age ten, as I recall, and on and on for the next thirty-five years until at age forty-five I'd finally said, "Oh, what the Hell, I give up," an...

  Sat Aug 24 - - clear, bright, magnificent clouds that the afternoon sun catches beautifully, one of the cheeriest ever, I wouldn't have missed this day for anything. I say that knowing that Mr Paul missed it, but he was honored lovingly at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, and a reception afterward with tasty food and good people who loved him. I don't remember a nicer day. Linda and I stopped at Somethin's Cookin' for loaves of bread, and now I'm having two broken off hunks, one of the Jewish challah type and one of the French baguette type; warmed and with a stick of butter to smear on. To go with a can of 5.5% ICEHOUSE beer from Bill's just up Beck Avenue. Doug runs, and Mike runs, and in the old days they ran together, sometimes past my house, The Old Place - - have you seen The Old Place lately, t's been renovated into a Southern Mansion - - but nowadays Doug runs local and Mike runs far away and sends me pics of interesting cars he runs past. A late 19...

  Below are the readings for Sunday, 25 August. Rather than my more usual thing of commenting on them in some hopefully helpful way, I enjoyed picking through them and at them, noting things that interest me even though I'm aware that I know just enough to know that I know nothing. But here goes. In the Joshua lesson, Joshua is challenging the Israelites to choose Y'hvah God of Israel over other gods. (Yes, I know that the usual spelling is Yahweh, but the way the Hebrew word יְ֭הוָה is pointed, and with the "ah" sound under the Vav, it sure looks like Y'hvah to me; or we could follow convention and say Adonai, but I don't like to follow convention all the Time, it's Y'hvah). We like to say "There's only One God, there are no other gods" but that's not what the Bible says, God himself commands "You shall worship no other gods but me," and many people have other gods than our God.  We'd respond that those aren't reall...

Movies: now we're more sophisticated, we call them "films" even though they're not on film, they're recorded electronically instead of on celluloid. And why did we call them "movies"? Because they move, they're not still shots like slides; people are moving. Or they seem that way until you examine a film strip with the thousands of still pictures that run by the projector fast enough to seem like movement. In my Time it was the Picture Show, can we go to The Show, there's a good Picture on at the Ritz?  Like books, films have a way, if they're competent and the audience is responsive, of putting the viewer on the side of the protagonist. It's the objective of  propaganda, in fact, to convince you of something without your realizing that you've been sold.  Sometimes I read, sometimes I blog, sometimes I watch films on my computer desktop. Sometimes I sit here and look out the window at what's happening on St Andrews Bay.  Almost ne...

Yesterday was a Best Day because my brother, Walt & Judy stayed over from the Saturday/Sunday wedding and we had lunch together at Hunt's. Saw the Bairds there. Eating at Hunt's is part and parcel of coming to Panama City. Oysters for me, raw half-shell, fried, and fried shrimp. Bite of Linda's catfish.  When Walt married Judy and moved from Louisiana to Pensacola, I'd thought that now I'd see him often, but that thinking failed to account for age and aging: that especially because of the traffic, whether I-10 or driving through the Fort Walton Destin nightmare over and back, we just can't do it anymore. Walt is four years younger than I, and they're managing it now and then. Our next adventure, God willing and Jesus don't come, nomesane?, we mean to head east again maybe about mid-October, as far as Wakulla. If it works out it'll be to see beloveds and Caroline's new house. That drive is generally peaceful, not frantic, but by then, wishing ...