Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. +++++++++ Think and speak for yourself; myself, in our developing political climate, I find this collect terrifying. But again, myself, as we sink into the darkness, I'm thankful to be the age I am, and to have lived in America's Time in the sun. At least, sun for me as a White American Male. For many Americans, it was just starting to get light.  The experience and lesson of human history is that every empire has its Time and then falls; either collapses fairly peaceably as the British Empire and the Soviet Union, or is brought down forcibly as the Roman Empire, the Japanese Em...

  Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations   Rooted in the Christian contemplative tradition, the Daily Meditations offer reflections from Richard Rohr, CAC faculty, and guest teachers to help you deepen your spiritual practice and embody compassion in the world.     READ ON CAC.ORG     Week Fourteen: Contemplative Nonconformity Protecting Our Own Light   Brian McLaren considers how authoritarian systems seek conformity. He highlights practices of contemplation and community that can strengthen our resolve and enable us to remain “salt and light” under difficult circumstances.   An expert in authoritarian regimes, Sarah Kendzior captures the danger like this:   Authoritarianism is not merely a matter of state control, it is something that eats away at who you are. It makes you afraid, and fear can make you cruel. It compels you to conform and to comply and accept things that you would never accept, to do things you never thought you would do. ...

The "lifelong study" that our theology professor recommended to us our final minutes of the course all those years ago is something I've taken to heart as a serious life commitment; hearing him say that most who graduate seminary and are ordained disappear into their career as parish minister, pastor, priest and never open another book. I've tried to do better, and on my own, not following my various bishops' recommendations or requirements for continuing education units, which have never interested me as checking some checkoff list. I do my own thing. It has been and continues interesting.  A subject that has intrigued me is what we call the Words of Institution in the Eucharistic Prayer:  On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying, "Take, eat. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."  After supper,...

  Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." So Jesus told them this parable: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hir...

If they wanted or expected their self-identity and cultures to remain intact, European countries, most noticeably Germany, made huge mistakes a few years ago when they graciously and generously and hospitably, but misguidedly, allowed huge influx of immigrants from Africa and the MiddleEast. Other countries too, but Germany especially is now experiencing the result as immigrants of vastly different worldviews create havoc and chaos as, instead of assimilating into the culture that welcomed them, they work to force their own culture on their hosts, stirring the extreme right wing AFD political backlash that is natural and human and was entirely foreseeable.  Not just Germany either, France with their secular culture and freedom of expression experiencing the violent murderous certitude of Islamist immigrantss against a free press, and the decapitation of a popular teacher who showed a caricature of the Prophet in his classroom.  There is a proverb "love it or leave it."  B...

  Do you think we'll have rain?  IDK, I'm not the meteorologist, the weather icon on my phone said 100% chance of rain today, Monday; and a weather alert dinged saying rain will start in 13 minutes, lasting about 19 minutes, so maybe. Early I went out and saw a couple clouds high, but I didn't go out again to see if it had rained or was raining because I don't like getting my socks wet, and that's what happens. Bubba usually sleeps with socks on because his feet get cold, and his ankles and legs.  Reading early: couple of articles in The New Yorker dated today, March 24, 2025. And the cartoons on those pages, but not all of them. Later the fiction piece, maybe later today, more likely later this week as I have other reading to enjoy as well.  Wiman. If you get "Zero At The Bone," read it slowly, pick up, read a section and put down style. This morning I re-read his Bronk section yet one more Time again, then a couple of new sections. He's like taking a...

This morning Linda commented that this is the first Time I've really, finally been "retired." My life is a history of retiring - - retiring from the Navy at age 42 after twenty years only to set up a consulting business based on what I knew from the Navy; retiring from parish ministry at age 63 after fifteen years only to find myself happily drafted into more of the same but on part-time arrangements serving local Episcopal parishes for another, what?, twenty-five years. And now to be retired because it's high Time and too exhausting to continue; not to go into where I find myself in life.  So then, now retired without a class to teach or a sermon to write, or a commitment to honor. Neither miles to go before I sleep, nor promises to keep.  What to do then with Time that's finally MY Time, not committed to anyone else or the calendar? My day begins not at sunset but at nine p.m., now and then eight o'clock, sometimes as late as ten, seldom eleven, never midnig...