A day of dreams and thoughts and memories, a day of perusing the library of a man who died recently and, at his son's invitation, selecting a few books to bring home, a day of stopping by Tally Ho on a tip, for the fried chicken livers and bringing the package home for a late noon dinner. IDK, maybe it's a Southern thing?  A day for a pleasant nap, then awake to do several things on Linda's prep list for Thursday's annual Thanksgiving Day family feast.  Contemplating Wednesday breakfast of hot & black and a leftover chicken liver sandwich: should I use butter or mayonnaise?  My sister would have had the answer, but I've asked my brother, because this is entirely a family matter. My family that liked peanut butter and butter sandwiches prefers our chicken liver sandwiches with either butter or mayo, I can't remember which. My family that always ate our cottage cheese in a bowl with milk and sugar. My brother will know whether my chicken liver sandwich should ...

  What am I doing? IDK, I have no idea. After reading late and going to bed at ten or eleven, I can't remember which, instead of nine o'clock sharp, so sleeping late and now sipping my magic mug of hot & black three hours later than usual - - . IDK. 70° outside and mostly sunny but beginning to cloud over as I sit here looking across St Andrews Bay at Shell Island and a small craft that ha s been anchored at the Pass for several days now. It has a crane at the stern and at first I thought it must be a  buoy tender, but that don't make no sense, a buoy tender sitting there for several days. When I see them working in the Bay, they stop at a buoy, maybe lift it out of the water, work on it a bit, set it back down in the water, and move on to another buoy that's due for maintenance. It's a USCG function. At the two PCB churches I served, one as interim rector just over a year and a half, the second as vicar for five years, we had parishioners who were in the Coast ...

The comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" frequently stirs interesting theological questions. What is heaven like? A prayer in our burial office (funeral service, p.481) reads,  "Give courage and faith to those who are bereaved, that they  may have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a  reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternal  life with those they love." The fact that this petition is in our Prayerbook confirms that it's a legitimate theology of the Episcopal Church. So, when do we get there, is it immediate, as in Jesus telling the repentant thief on the next cross, "this day you will be with me in paradise"? Or is it when the trumpet is sounded at the End of Days and all dead and living are called up into the clouds to meet Jesus and be judged? What is true? Pilate again, "What is truth?" I struggle with it, with Truth, but it's fine, because I've found the struggle for Truth to be a main interest of m...

  Just a Friday evening thought meander. This will suffice for Saturday morning blogpost, eh? For years at this beginning of the holiday season, I've wanted to order something from Zingerman's, a Jewish vendor in Ann Arbor, Michigan. IDK, maybe because of my UM history and attachment, maybe because of continuing family there decades later, IDK, no matter. Maybe because their catalog and other publicity makes things seem so intriguing. At some point early this week a question floats in the bubble over my head, "Hey, Bub, you're eighty-nine: if not now, when?" and I go ahead and place a minimal order with Zingerman's. After whittling a large order down to reasonableness, three kinds of cheese and, with Malinda in mind, a package of Rugelach, eight raspberry and eight chocolate, though on tasting them it's pretty obvious that she wouldn't like them. The box arrived during Friday afternoon nap Time. Waking, I sampled two of the cheeses. The Italian cheese ...

1:1 At the first of ELOHIM creating the skies and the land -- 2 and the land was desolation and emptiness; and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of ELOHIM was hovering over the face of the waters -- 3 and ELOHIM said, "יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר (Let there be light)"; and it was light. 4 And ELOHIM saw the light, that it was good; and ELOHIM separated between the light and between the darkness. 5 And ELOHIM called to the light "day," and to the darkness he called "night." And it was evening and it was morning-day one. From James D. Tabor's "The Book of Genesis" of the Transparent English Bible, which is refreshingly wonderful for perusal and study. I wish Dr Tabor would finish and publish more books of his TEB but so far all I can find is Genesis. But to my thought this morning, ELOHIM (God) says "יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר" let there be light, where יְהִ֣י yehi is the Word of God speaking to initiate action, in this case inviting light to...

  Cool outside, 49°F and autumn, fall is here. An ibuprofen for a backache is the bad news, but the good news is my first magic mug of hot & black from the shipment of club coffee that arrived in Wednesday's mail, and the rest of a biscuit started last evening, soaked in Steen's pure cane syrup. Whether cane or maple, I use syrup very slowly, this is my last bottle of four ordered at least a couple years ago. I gave Robert one at the Time.  The reason I'm able to have this food conversation is that written instructions and pharmacists' advice say take ibuprofen with food, because it can damage the stomach. A huge bottle from Sam's, it's here in the first place as a last resort against the sciatica episode I had in the spring. Ibuprofen is an NSAID, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, which I have no idea what that's all about. Thursday: 12 noon today, Linda and Kristen have Thanksgiving Dinner with Malinda at Pruitt Health out Jenks Avenue. They only...

  MAGA, the political slogan Make America Great Again does not really have history in mind, a Time when we were better than now, or a definition of greatness. Maybe the five year period from summer 1945 to summer 1950 - - ?, after WW2 when we were Earth's most powerful and newly influential military force and before we were drawn into the Korean War?  Maybe a Time of prosperity for us such as  WW1 armistice 11 November 1918 to the October 29, 1929 Black Friday collapse of the world economy into the poverty of the Great Depression? Or maybe a Time of seeming Peace for us, from that WW1 armistice 11 November 1918 to the start of WW2 for us 4 December 1941 when the German Holocaust had already been underway for several years of unspeakable horror in Europe?  Great would be a subjective call, not only because every Time is a passing phase that cannot be arrested and held in place, but especially because in every Time there were those who were experiencing their relative ...

  MODERN JEWISH HISTORY What Were Shtetls? Clearing up myths about these Eastern European villages where Jews lived. BY   JOELLYN ZOLLMAN Virtually every Jew today has a mental image of the  shtetl   , the small villages in which Jews lived for centuries in Eastern Europe. These images are informed by the portrayal of shtetl life in a variety of media, from fiction to film. Sholem Aleichem ‘s Tevye the Dairyman (which most of us know better as  Fiddler on the Roof ) and artist  Marc Chagall ‘s whimsical depictions of Ukrainian Jewish life (with images of floating fiddlers) contribute to the contemporary vision of the shtetl as a small Jewish town in in Eastern Europe where a population of poor but industrious Jews worked and studied, all the while seemingly accompanied by a  klezmer  soundtrack. It doesn’t take a professional historian to realize that such a static representation of the populous and geographically disperse Jewish communities of ea...

Coming up, the church commemorates the last Sunday of the church year as Christ the King Sunday, designated by the Pope in, as I recall, 1925, as a confrontation with civil governments that were establishing unaccountable total dictatorships. That's in my mind as key appointments are announced for our upcoming administration.  Also and always in mind is where we are in the Universe of trillions of galaxies, with Earth and our solar system in an outlying place of one of them, our Milky Way we call it. And theologies not evolved all that much since the days when it was thought, and the church insisted on penalty of death that folks believe, that Earth was the center of Creation and the object of all that God had in mind. As I mosey on my path of seeking the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will, it's pretty clear that the faith is as geocentric, Ptolemaic, as ever. Does that bother me? Yes, it does, as I try to move beyond mindless ignorance in my travels and contemplation...