The senior Hamas leader whom an Israeli drone photographed where he was killed even as he collapsed and threw a stick at it, was quoted early that "not even a hundred thousand" Palestinian deaths would be too high a price to pay for their goal of destroying Israel.  Their 7 October 2023 atrocity and massacre, which caught a careless Israel by surprise, triggered Israel's all out war response that as of 25 February 2025, according to the Wikipedia article linked below, has cost the Gazan people nearly half that many deaths already; and the prospect is open for the destruction and killing to resume.  Here in America we have no comprehension of the intensity of hatred on both sides of that Middle East issue. 2025 - 1948 = 77 years the issue has been building and feelings are such that no peaceful resolution is possible, only violence, perhaps actually as each side wishes, to the total extinction of one side or the other.  In a world where Jews have been tormented and mu...

Some mornings I wake up and rise early, most mornings. Coffee, magic mug of hot & black, and open something, phone or book or computer. Phone for weather and maybe scroll through emails. Computer for news and more detail of emails, maybe lectionary to read Sunday lessons and see if there’s anything I might want to blog about.  Oh, while coffee is brewing, slide the glass door open to peer outside, close the door quickly if too cold for me, or too hot and muggy; or, as this morning, step outside to stand at 7H porch railing and admire creation, Bay ahead and to left and right, downtown PC down the shoreline to east and round past Tarpon Dock Bridge, Cove Condo and Tyndall AFB, Davis Point. To the west, the Pass, BayPoint, PCB gulf-front high-rises with their lights along Thomas Drive. Straight head of me and to the south, a few lights on Shell Island, over, and beyond into the Universe as far as it goes. Anyway, coffee and action. This morning open "Darkness" and read a se...

  Maybe like last evening, another blogpost for myself only, available to anyone interested but not linked on my Facebook page for regular public viewing. Why? Because it's about my search, my Seek The Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What it Will.  Where the cost seems immense, robbing me of security in life and death. Security, comfort, the assurance that is Faith (Hebrews 11:1), where Faith that is believing (Mark Twain?) what you know damn well ain't so, jumping off into disillusionment but where I don't want to live with illusions that are (Steve Jobs) trapped in dogma, the result of other people's thinking - - people of ancient Time whose worldview was irresolvably different from my own. So, of God and of Religion where they are not the same thing. Religion is organized institutional, may be creedal, doctrinal, traditional, dogmatic; God is whoever or whatever is out there and loves me,  as Bryan Green said, loves me,  even me, just as I am, the way I am, speck ...

Yarden Bibas’s eulogy for wife Shiri, sons Ariel and Kfir His family murdered in Gaza, freed hostage says he misses nibbling on baby Kfir, hopes there are butterflies in heaven for Ariel; asks slain wife: ‘Guard me so I don’t sink into darkness’ https://www.timesofisrael.com/sorry-i-couldnt-protect-you-yarden-bibass-eulogy-for-wife-shiri-sons-ariel-and-kfir/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2025-02-26&utm_medium=email Why have I said nothing recently about the 7 October atrocity and the unspeakable obscenity that is Hamas, a force of uncivilized barbaric evil whose sole characteristic is hate, not even love of its own people, but hate. I have thought and resisted lest I reveal more of myself than I am willing for anyone but God to know, for mine are not the thoughts and raging anger of a supposed "holy man." But again, for all of Israel's deep flaws, Israel will make their gravest error of all Time if they allow the peace to settle with Hama...

  As said here recently, I'm reading two books. And I'm reading them slowly, for different reasons. One book is "Darkness at Chancellorsville," a novel about that battle of our American Civil War when General Stonewall Jackson was mistakenly shot by his own Confederate forces and died soon after, a real blow to the Confederacy. The author, Ralph Peters, takes us into the minds of soldiers of all ranks, private through general, on both sides. I'm reading it slowly because it's an adventure that happens to me as I read, and I'm not anxious for it to end. From days in the senior classroom of Bill Weeks' World History class at Bay High, and continuing interest over the years, I already know the story anyway, so the novel is itself the adventure, not rushing to find out what happened.  Not up to the authors of "A Soldier of the Great War" or "Midnight's Children" by far, Peters does a really good job of keeping me reading slowly and ...