\ \ We had in mind, with Kristen driving, a trip to Apalachicola this morning, visit the John Gorrie Museum, shop, have lunch, and be home by mid-afternoon when darkness begins to set in. But yesterday's promise of rain shelved that plan. The car is cramped in the back seat, so maybe it's sort of a relief that I'm not looking to make that ride today.  There was a Time when American cars were built to accommodate rear seat passengers comfortably, with plenty of legroom: that started ending for esthetic reasons, and practical reasons of overall length, when car design changed from square with the passenger compartment extending the full length of the car, to incorporating the "boot" to be more than simply a trunk-rack, with the "boot" or trunk extended forward into rear seat legroom, pushing the rear seat up close to the front seat.  Meanwhile, the threatened rainstorms are apparently not developing after all. We'll have a Saturday at home, maybe enjoy...

  As a word person, I found it such a relief, indeed an inspiration this morning, to see "galoot" finally made the list as Anu Garg's word.a.day. No, I'm serious, eh?, this is my place to look for words that I can cleverly, subtly work into +Time blogposts, yea now and then even into sermons, nomesane? Galoot. It's flexible too, can be varied by using double instead of singular: galloot - - if your word correct device lets you correct it. In a Bible study forty years ago, I pointed out that in the text Jesus was not being serious, he was being sarcastic (yes, I know, I told this here before) - - to which a naive, not to say ignorant, Innocent protested mightly and angrily, "Jesus would NEVER have been sarcastic." That's a case of man creating man's God in man's own image of perfection; whereas our theology names Jesus as perfect God and perfect man in God's, not man's, image of perfection. Perfect God, perfect man doesn't exclude ...

Been up long enough to drink a mug of hot & black, this one with dark brown sugar and half and half cream, a treat about twice a year or so. 3:14 AM and sunrise is not for three hours yet. Why up so early? Slept three hours and that was it, couldn't sleep, which seems to be a malady of extreme old age. Does it bother me? SomeTimes. It's not bothering me now, but it bothered the aitch out of me yesterday with a full calendar that brought us home about two o'clock totally exhausted to a glass of cold watermelon wine for Linda and one finger of Laphroaig with a cube of ice for me and falling asleep. Linda fell asleep, I fought it off, so opened my laptop and played several favorite solitaire card games.  Low, heavy clouds, 92% humidity,  59° F but  wind NE 11 mph with gusts to 21 mph and  90% chance of rain: a good day for staying close to home, eh? We're expecting a former parishioner and special old friend from Apalachicola days later this morning. Do I miss ...

  When dealing with us in a disciplinary situation in which we'd avoided punishment this Time but sure as aitch would get it next Time, and there'd dee well better not BE a next Time, our father would conclude, "... and that's not a threat, that's a promise."  It comes to mind at this Time every year as the church sinks into Advent season with its promise or threat of the End of Days and the Second Coming of Christ to judge us. As in  Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Not a celebratory prospect, "Why would you have the Day of the Lord, is it not a day of darkness, not of light?" At any event, it's a dusky, nebulous, threat for a world whose ending, scientifically scheduled, is on calendar for some four billion years hence. Yes, the trumpet could sound for a sudden Mass Extinction Event as we head to church this morning, but not very threatening to the modern mind, w e can ignore it and turn all our Advent attention to deco...

Tangentially in my life I know a young man whom I admire tremendously for the almost defiant way he has lived and is living his life, seemingly random, no evident life-plan; detaching and off on his own after college, his own person, tied to nobody's expectations of "normal" but heading out, off and far away to places only he has been, would go and abide a while. Still today, a decade or a dozen years after college graduation, on his way to whatever his dream turns out to be, maybe simply settling into it as it develops, unplanned, just happening.  While reading Rachel Kushner's essay below, and thinking of myself in that stage of life that, if going back and doing over I wouldn't change a thing, but if doing a second Time I would do so differently, I thought of him and his life that he claimed and is living his own way instead of living his life everybody else's way. It's an ideal, at least for me, a dreamer of sorts. My dreams can wander. I kicked into M...