Gazing out the window on the bus to Nowhere, what to say that isn’t useless in the surrounding time-space. Sooth, it isn’t surrounding, I’m part of it. And that somewhat reluctantly, having made my first mistake of the day: reading News online. Why do we bother.  Indoors now after  two hours  on the balcony with wind and dark, damp breeze and mist, same slow shrimp boat and its low hum. Lightest drizzle of rain.  Port light of another craft passing, for sure not Navy, as they don’t head out for their hard day at sea until eight o’clock. Not sarcasm, just observation. Navy lab, I suppose they’re doing scientific work that requires going outside the three mile limit for cigarettes before returning to port by happy hour.  Second cup of coffee and still too drowsy to walk this morning. Walk anyway, get with it, Buster.  What to write. No Easter Week off to recoup, Thursday afternoon text “Kristen’s home until Sunday” from her mother, exhausting...

Nothing But The Blood You are at risk. Your eternal soul at risk. You may be seated. What’s it about, these postResurrection appearances of Jesus? Already he’s appeared twice again today in John’s gospel alone. Do you know what this is about? It’s about love, agape’ -- one of the NT Greek words for love. But today love that is more than agape’.   There are at least three NT Greek words for love. Agape’, Philia, and Eros, perhaps in that sort of “ascending order” -- the ultimate being eros, from which we get “erotic” and I’m not going there today.  The most common NT Greek word for love is agape’ which means kindness, charity, lovingkindness, commitment, generosity. Agape’ is the particular love that is not a feeling, but how you treat other people. Yet another NT Greek word for love is philia, which means friendship, fondness, affection. The tone is different from agape’, although in the Gospel of John, from which we read this morning, the words p...

Sometimes change is welcome. After trying the new translation Common English Bible for Lent, a welcome change for exploration, our parish returned for Easter to reading from the more familiar New Revised Standard Version in our services. Lots of Bible is read and heard in Episcopal worship, and the translation makes a difference to an ear that is tuned for nuance in Bible sounds.  Of course, the NRSV itself is relatively new for us: until it arrived a quarter century ago we were reading from the Revised Standard Version, which is still my favored sound, a somewhat softened and easier to hear King James bible that we changed to when I was in high school. I’ve told that story here before, the fundamentalist explosion over the change of a word in Isaiah 7:14. Truth, I’ve observed that I also can be appalled, as I was with the NRSV addition of the word "when" to Genesis 1:1. Theologically it changed the notion of creation ex nihilo  to the idea that the Word brought orde...

Not At All Saturday morning, warm and muggy. 76F and 95%. My seat is the blue lift-chair we gave mama for her 98th birthday, it has buttons, a remote, she never learned to use. But I can use it, “L” for “Lean Back” and “R” is for “Rise.” Or is “L” for “Lift” ...  Good write-up in PCNH this morning about Coach Ray Graves, who died Friday at age 96, and a great picture with Steve Spurrier when he was quarterback for the Gators. We change, don’t we, the camera doesn’t lie. Coach Spurrier must have been 19 in that picture, or about 20. I have a picture of me at that age too, looking not at all like the bemused old fogey I saw taking his heart pills in the mirror a few minutes ago. I have hopes for UF football this year, and also for SCAR, not to mention J. Harbaugh at MGoBlue. Bo is back, they’re saying.  From my resting place this Saturday morning, a balcony rail, and beyond that gray. Like a painting, medium gray sea, horizontal dark gray stripe of barrier island ac...

It may be a shrimpboat, I can’t tell. It’s pretty close offshore, and judging by the lights it seems to be working a pattern. What pleases me is the silence. Oh, I can hear the engine, but it’s quiet, unlike the Vietnamese shrimpboats that worked the bay years ago before the house was air conditioned, and the windows in my upstairs bedroom would be open, and the sound of the unmuffled engine on the Bay all night would be annoying, like some kid running his Model A back and forth. It was annoying until I woke up the next morning and realized it had lulled me to sleep. Air conditioning is wonderful, but there was nothing like the cool, damp, salty breeze wafting in at will. If I were still ten or twelve I’d lie this chaise lounge down flat, bring a pillow and sleep out here, go to sleep listening to waves lapping the beach.   The moon is high, about a half moon behind a thin white cloud just west of local meridian and south over the Gulf.  The boat has turned and h...

This continues an amazing Easter Week. It began "the afternoon of that day, the first day of the week," as Luke put it, when we, like Jesus in some of the gospel postResurrection appearances, had supper with friends. In awesome company, lamb dinner with thoughtful vegetables, choice of red wine so I had both. The most excellent appetizer, endive filled with pecans, walnuts and honey, sprinkled liberally with blue cheese. I don’t know what blue cheese, but it was superb. The day's highlight was a small boy summoning Grandfather Tom to come share his tent with him. Getting in the tent was easy, crawling out of the tent and standing up was less auspicious, an exercise in ludicrosity. So I must resume the deep kneebends I did faithfully for weeks after leaving Cleveland Clinic. Here on the seventh floor, seagoing traffic this week has been extraordinary, several large ships coming and going each day. It may not be unusual: from our house we were deep inside and seldom sa...

Easter Week is going well so far. Linda just read in the PCNH that the air show is this weekend at Tyndall, I wonder if any of it will be visible from our balcony here, we’ll see. Walk this morning, and Wednesday is breakfast after, today I think we’re going to Golden Corral. Where is breakfast best? Three are a toss and good variety.  GC where the milk is freezing cold; maybe I'll have a fried chicken drumstick this morning. Naanh, too greasy.  Bayou Joe’s because we both grew up on Massalina Bayou. Fried green beans once in a while. The coffee is consistently best at Big Mama’s on the Bayou, the chef cooks eggs OM best of the three;, and on a perfect day, their outside back porch looking over the marsh, mullet jumping. Quiet. Couple cups of nice strong clear hot black coffee. They use the Community Coffee that was always brewed at the Jesuit house in Louisiana where I did the silent retreat, summer of 2013. For a year or two Robert lived in a house that’...