life

 

May 2026, can you imagine? Today, Friday the Fifteenth, is Robert's ninety-first birthday, who'd have thought?! As children, we grew up together on Massalina Bayou and were at each other's birthday parties when we turned seven, eighty-four years ago. Classmates In the Cove School class of 1949 we both love Cove School, where together we suffered third grade with the exacting Miss Ruth Martin but endured, and together we love shared memories of eighth grade with Miss Virginia Parker. 

In our aging years, Robert arranged and hosted class reunions, including fish fries at Cove School. At one year's reunion, by unanimous acclamation, Robert was elected President for Life of our Class of 1949. Another year, maybe our last reunion, Miss Parker joined us. 

In the old Time, Virginia Parker was the pianist at St Thomas by the Sea Episcopal Church in Laguna Beach out on the west end of Panama City Beach. As the priest at St Thomas, I visited Miss Parker at home and in hospital, and one chilly morning, with her niece, I waded out into the waves of The Gulf and scattered her ashes on the sea.

Thinking of life itself, this morning my coffee is a little different, with a hint of cinnamon. We have a large bottle with enough cinnamon to last several lifeTimes. It must be a baker's jar, I ordered it online for Linda a few years ago and, unlike us, it's still full slrength. 

The lion? Aslan. He's the Son of the Emperor beyond the Sea. Like Jesus the Word here on Earth, in another world Aslan sang Narnia into creation, which children witnessed as they listened from afar in the darkness. If you read about it later, you realize how evil got into creation, and you find out how the lamppost got into the Narnian forest. 

Don't be confused, be clear: in the Pantokrator's boundless imagination and illimitable will, Aslan does not represent Jesus; rather, Aslan is the form of Word and Song that Jesus takes in that other world, where he is the protector and savior until Narnians make their own voyage across the great eastern sea.

Happy birthday, old friend.

Carroll