It isn't unusual mornings in my waking up process for things to come to mind that won't quit, that keep on keeping on and stand in the way of my going back to sleep. Over these ninety years I have left undone those things which I ought to have done, and I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and if I admit even one of them in the door to my drifting thoughts, they flood over me like an incoming tide and further sleep is not only impossible and I might as well get up and turn on the coffee; but if I do manage to fall asleep anyway, nightmarish dreams ruin any peace in my back-to-sleepness.  Just so this morning, although this one was not in the nature of a there is no health in me, miserable offender, it kept me awake sufficient to throw in the towel and rise for my first mug of hot & black.  Some forty-five years ago w hen I began studies at the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, my bishop (who made the arrangements for LTSG to admit...

Tue Feb 3 7:32 AM and 2026 just keeps getting deeper and deeper into itself, Time, which is always the present moment, moving inexorably toward its future.  "Inexorably," a good word, I looked it up, it means "in a way that is impossible to stop or prevent," which we all knew, but how often does someone stop to define a word? Well, come to think of it, once a day, eh?, for those of us who receive Anu Garg's a-word-a-day in our email.  So, my life, which to me is always present here and now, stays in the same place, the present; but Earth moves inexorably round the Sun, giving us a way to count Time, adding numbers to our past, making mine consist of, so far, 91 Thanksgivings, 91 Christmases, 91 New Years Days, 91 Januarys, and now working into my 91st February: ninety-one of everything on the calendar will be complete on my next birthday. So, what do I do to help Time include me a bit longer? Well (there's that ubiquitous well again), I actively acknowledge ...