\ Linda and I had a nice long (for us) walk this morning, out, around St Andrews Marina, and back to 7H.  Halfway through our walk I remembered how much I'd enjoyed, on my spring walks last year that ended the day I was overwhelmed with gnats in my eyes, nose and ears, how much I'd enjoyed taking along a tunafish sandwich and a thermos of hot & black and finding a place to sit, enjoy a breakfast, and watch the Bay. So upon arriving back here in 7H I did just that, a tuna-melt on a slice of the German type bread we bought at the TAFB commissary; and a mug of hot, black coffee. "Hits the spot" as the saying goes, or whatever, nomesane? Up early, two-fifty-nine into three o'clock to rework my Handout for Sunday's fourth session on Mark and his gospel. This week I'm trying for Mark chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, and with the goal of finishing up with chapters 14, 15 and 16 the following Sunday. Below, scroll down, is the handout content. Before signing off this ...

  The mind plays tricks doesn't it: I thought I'd written and published a blog post early this morning, but turns out not so. Maybe it's not the mind, maybe it's the huge "90" balloons floating in the far corner of the living room like the yellow light of a traffic signal, cautioning me that Time is all I've got, nomesane?  Which is why I usually capitalize Time.  Time is all you have too, but you're too young to put much thought into that yet.  Yesterday at church was enormous fun that entirely overrode my lifelong reticence and reluctance to be cast in the center and talked about. As I said, now nobody needs to speak at my funeral. For the first Time ever, we were the last people to leave an event, and as we walked past the kitchen counter on our way to the car, I noticed that there was lots of fried fish leftover, so I filled a go-box. Fried fish for Sunday dinner, for Sunday supper, for Monday breakfast.  Monday morning early I assembled the handou...

Four o'clock, four-thirty-nine, to be more precise. Early morning and I probably should be looking over my Sunday school lesson plan for five chapters of the Gospel according to Mark. But I went outside on 7H porch this morning: if I stay in the tiny strip of a shadow behind the upright post that shades me from the blinding brightness of the Bay side streetlamp in Oaks by the Bay Park next door, the heavens are velvety black with a few bright stars. It looks like a nice Lord's Day, eh?  It looks like a good Time to think about life itself, nomesane?, which is what I've been doing, shehecheyanu, blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who gives us life, and sustains us, and has brought us to this Time, baruch ata, blessed are you. Contemplating the unanswerable: Why me? Why me to live this life, to have lived as one of The Privileged at this Time of human life on this little planet in a solar system on a middling to outer ring of an ordinary galaxy in a Universe...

+Time blogpost for Sunday, September 28, 2025      Good morning and welcome to session three of what I intended to be four class sessions about Mark and his Good News about Jesus.       The idea is to explore “kata Markon” (according to Mark) from a literary perspective. It is an anonymous writing about Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection, written about 70 AD, forty years after Good Friday and Easter. We do not know who “Mark” was, or where he was when he wrote, or who his intended audience was. Mark’s literary agenda is to persuade his readers that, counter to the Jews’ expectation of a conquering military Messiah (anointed king), Jesus was/is what God planned all along: a servant Messiah who would suffer, die and be resurrected, the Son of Man to rule the kingdom of God on Earth as God’s regent; and to leave you so frustrated that Jesus' followers fail to recognize him that you Mark's reader are inspired to get up and go proclaim Christ yourself....