Currently at Baytown Tire with my car first thing this morning for tire rotation, oil and filter change, new wiper blades as they gunk up the windshield every time they’re used regardless of wiping them clean, covered with road tar, haven’t been changed since I first bought the car and put on new tires and wiper blades two or three years ago and we were heading down to Gainesville. Yesterday we voted early and made appointments, lawyer, Baytown, something else, isn’t that an exciting blogpost! Worse than a diary and nowhere near a journal. Friends journal, but as reported here before, I’ve never journaled, only doing two or three days in October 2010 after being given “two to five months,” which in MediSpeak means “any moment” and I thought and decided that, having ministered many people through their dying, I’d enjoy journaling my own as I experienced it, switched to CaringBridge until leaving Cleveland Clinic good as new, and switched to +Time in February 2011. Sometimes the blo...

After nine hours sleep (I know there should be an apostrophe there, but in defiance I'm not putting it), awakening this Monday morning to the mystery that "Truth is not Truth" although I do understand the man somewhat obliquely. For one thing, people may reasonably see truth differently, my truth "Blessed be God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit" is not a truth that either a Muslim or a Jew could utter truthfully. So, truth is indeed not necessarily truth, but even if Rudy may be right as he tried to wax profound, he could have been more lucid in saying what he meant unless he actually meant to stir the waters, which, more than a tactic, is truthfully a strategy. For what? clinging to office. NomeSayne? Pics from 7H, early Saturday afternoon, Polish Steamship underway for Tyne with a load of wood pellets; early Sunday evening Seaboard Peru passing 7H with general cargo next port Houston: just this Monday morning look at clouds beyond Shell Island over th...

See that ye walk carefully, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not foolish, but wise, understanding the will of the Lord. (Ephesians 5:15-17). You may be seated. Every third or fourth Sunday morning I stand here in your pulpit (my pulpit too, seeing Linda and I’ve been members here since 1955), I stand here in the pulpit making a fool of myself, because we are fools, every so-called Christian so-called Preacher stands under 1 Corinthians 4:10 as a fool for Christ, so I surrender my introversion, modesty, reserve and self-consciousness to make a fool of myself.  I surrender all, I surrender all all to Jesus I surrender I surrender all.  and what else? What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus; What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Unsophisticated, non-Episcopal, totally unAnglican, two of my nevertheless all time favorite hymns of surrender. Last Sunda...

Friday is fish day, seafood day. As it was in the beginning, is now ...  We pretty much have three meals, little or no snacking. For me, odd something for breakfast, yesterday a sardine sandwich, Thursday morning a double cheeseburger leftover from party for Joseph at church, day before that an anchovie sandwich, different things. One day earlier in the week a chik-fil-a biscuit. Sometimes eggs. So but then dinner at lunchtime, between about 12 noon and two o'clock pm a meal: something meat and one vegetable of some sort, one day the lamb shank with carrots, rice and gravy. Ice water, 3 to 5 ounce glass of red wine. Actually, the lamb shank lasted for two days dinner. A cookie: this week we're working through a package of thin and crispy gluten-free ginger cookies that Linda found at Trader Joe's the last time we were in Tallahassee.  Friday, as I say, fish. Last week I bought a red snapper at Tarpon Dock and Linda baked it, one of our favorite seafood dishes. Shrimp ...

Between books, films, theology, lectionary, weather, Rhode Island, Bible, cars, oysters, mullet, 7H, Navy, Panama City, summer camp, WashDC, family, Japan, California, church, Anglicanism, and other growing-up memories, now and then politics, I have more than enough that occurs to blog about mornings. But this particular issue (scroll down) brings something back to mind. The spring of 2008 I attended Credo, an eight-day invitational retreat for active and retired Episcopal clergy. Mine was for retired priests, and at 72 I was neither the youngest nor by far the oldest clergyman there. Some of them were quite well known in the church as leaders, authors, professors, teachers. One had been on faculty at Sewanee and while a professor there had taught a seminary student, an extremely difficult priest whom I had served with, and told me the faculty had found him "incapable of learning" and the seminary had not recommended the man for ordination, but that his bishop had (obviousl...