Summer 1963 we moved into a small house in an area of Yokohama called Bayview. Military housing, sitting on a hilltop, it was on a cul-de-sac but a bit off to itself, with a high stone wall on the west side, and looking south over Tokyo Bay. Immediately below us, down a steep hill of rocks and grass, was a small Japanese temple with monks who cared for the cemetery that was on the other side of the high stone wall, and a typical Japanese neighborhood of wood and paper houses and shops, cobblestone streets.  It was a Time before everything was air conditioned, and our house was not, so we slept with open windows. Mornings very early, in the darkness just before dawn as things were waking up, we would hear, coming up from the neighborhood down the hill below, the wail of a flute-sounding instrument along with the sound of geta,  those traditional Japanese wooden shoes' clop clop clop on the stone streets. It was the noodle man, announcing as he pulled his cart throug...

\ Some days Fr Richard's meditation (scroll down) is too thoughtful not to pass along, all days it's better than anything I think or say or read or write.  His meditation today hits me head on as I sit here looking out across the Bay at a cloudless clear blue sky beautifully wretched bitter windy day, with a new bandage and freeze spots on my head from this morning's visit to the dermatology clinic and another long wait for the biopsy call.  Oft told before but I'm never going to repeat it because the farther it recedes in my rear view mirror the less certain I am about all of it and the more skeptical - - the evening of February 13, 1984, which would have been my grandfather Weller's 112th birthday, in my several-years-long spiritual, vocational, mental, emotional, physical, state of being transition from Navy to Church, I had a Moses experience that explained and righted everything that seemed to be going bad at the Time. "I AM speaking to you, Tom Weller....

\ Wind gusts to 35 mph are stirring whitecaps on the Bay. Yesterday's blogpost - - basically only seen by a thousand viewers in Singapore who are working on how to scam me - - was overshadowed by pictures I posted after it; so I've refashioned and edited it for this morning. First Sunday in Lent and today's Propers are a theme park of the season: peace, temptation, sin, damnation, forgiveness and restoration. And the Romans 5 reading sets out pretty much everything one needs to read to understand Paul's theology.   The Collect sets the stage, then the Genesis reading tells part of the story of what theologians call The Fall: prompted by the serpent, tempted by the luscious fruit, earthlings disobey God's command and eat what is forbidden.  It's classic, a perfect theology case.  And maybe it was worth it, the fruit was delicious, and we didn't die as God had said we would. (Not yet anyway; but it turns out that "yep, we are no longer immortal like the a...