Lent 2026 is my contemplation season when, among other things, I'm trying to exercise my brain by thinking "outside the box." In my situation, ninety year old long-retired priest, that may involve challenging long-held beliefs that I've brought along in life growing up in the Christian church, resting in my comfortable assumptions that they are knowledge, when actually they are faith beliefs (see Hebrews 11:1).  This morning in Lent I'm contemplating our faith event of Death, Silence, Life that's Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter. For my mind, and for my blogposts on +Time, this is old hat repetitive, but fine, I'm there again. Many scholars of the New Testament know St Paul and Jesus as apocalypticists who anticipated the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, when God would overturn world order and send the cosmic Son of Man figure of Daniel 7 to Earth to establish and rule the kingdom of God on Earth. It would be physical here and now in our resurrecti...

+++++++++++ The death of our beloved Beverly McDaniel is a perfectly natural but most sorrowful Time in our human life cycle. We met Beverly soon after arriving in the diocese  as new members of the clergy family  the summer of 1984. My best recall is meeting Beverly at the February 1985 diocesan convention in Mobile. At one event Linda and I were seated at a table with several Holy Nativity folks, and I made instant and lifelong thereafter friends with Beverly, who was sitting next to me. She was HNES Head of School at the Time, and I worked with her during the admission of my grandson Ray Kelly, and my Kristen, as students. Ray started in third grade, Kristen started in K3 and graduated eighth grade eleven years later. We are a Holy Nativity family.  After retiring from Trinity, Apalachicola late in 1998, we came home to Panama City and Holy Nativity Episcopal Church where we had been members since its founding in 1955. Soon after coming back, I reckon it was early 1999...

Fog, it's fog season again. Sandburg, right? Carl Sandburg. "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on."  He must have been thinking of Chicago fog, eh?, not ours. Our fog doesn't move on, it stays for the season it defines for itself about this Time every year. So, it's good, fog season, I like it. I'm not at sea, nor going up in the air Junior Birdmen, and trying to avoid driving in it.  Lost, I've lost my train of thought for this blogpost, haven't I. Yes, I have, it's rhetorical, so on my own I reckon a question mark is not essential. And not only has my thought evaporated, the large chunk of panettone I ate with my mug of hot & black has caused my bp to plummet, shutting my brain down, so back to bed for a short winter's nap this early morning 2025, on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.  ... and may all your Christmases be white fog on Christmas Day in the morning. For lif...

O holy night: happy Christmas to all. Not getting out into anything that lasts until we have to drive home after dark, we are at home here in 7H watching online our parish church's Christmas Eve spectacular long titled "Holy Commotion" and living up to its name. They are all good, but in my memories, the absolute worst most pathetic have been the sweetest, dearest and best.  There was a Time, Christmas 1984 to Christmas 1997, when I was very sure that Christmas did not happen anywhere in the world but Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola, the worship, liturgy, spirit, music, choir, musicians were that perfect. That feeling held on in me for many years after my October 1998 retirement. But watching and loving the little characters on show at my old home parish, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, stole my heart away. We have a beautifully decorated Christmas tree here at home and loved ones are coming tomorrow to open presents and for Christmas dinner, and it me...