"Climate Crisis" that I'm reading about, to manage Earth so lovingly that generations after us can have an (increasingly unlikely) life, instead of the future as a non-event. Sensible management is a futile undertaking as long as humans are stalled in our current phase of evolution toward the likeness of God in which our Faith says we are created.  At this stage, we are moving through, or worse branched off into, or worst stuck in, an egoistic, self-centered, power-hungry, greedy, Certain, entitled, selfish race of creatures of satanic likeness, to whom, in our egocentrism of assuming we are the finished product, it never occurs that we are not the divinely intended or even natural final stage. As part of the Big Bang's continuing expansion, Earth's creation is ongoing, and mentally, emotionally we are somewhere just beyond the reptilian.  It is a truth of science and Nature that, from single cell to marine life to apes to homo erectus to Neanderthals to homo sapi...

Philip was a best friend through Cove School and Bay High and my first two years at Florida, after which I continued at Florida and Philip transferred to FSU for his major in Art or an Art specialization. Always imaginative and artistic, Philip was an artist, married the love of his life, lived the life of his own doing. Our close friendship phased out after he left Gainesville for Tallahassee and we went our separate ways.  I last saw Philip at our wedding in 1957, and then not again until forty or so years later when Robert organized a reunion of our Cove School class of 1949, which I think must have been Spring 1999 or 2003? Memory serves, but it's not going to get a very big tip, because it doesn't serve well. Born in 1935 a couple months after me, Philip died in 2018,  https://www.fortmyersmemorial.com/obituaries/Philip-Johnson-21291/#!/Obituary , which greatly saddened me. He had come to a couple of our class reunions, we had resumed our friendship by mail, wer...

 

No, now I remember: THIS is what so distracted and rattled me yesterday that I neglected to finish and post whatever I was blogging about. Distracted me again because I lived my childhood through the years in which the German people were committing the Holocaust against Creation, showing humanity's true colors, mentality, and disposition; and I served during the Vietnam War, and I have this uneasy awareness that as a created race we humans are beyond any sort of whatever hopes the Creator might in the beginning have meant "salvation" to be for us.  Genesis 6 5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me...

  So far so good with our partially repaired HVAC system cooling and keeping us comfortable. Yet, I'm borderline ashamed to even speak of this sort of luxury, extreme comfort, complaint, in a world where most people around the globe don't have enough to eat, or clean water to drink or for bathing, or safe surroundings and shelter, a place to sleep tonight. A friend I admire, a fellow Episcopal clergyman, when he's offering thanks before a community meal, always challenges us to remember, as we feast, those who have nothing to eat today, and no place to sleep tonight. Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy; and yet Kyrie only has mercy through us, God has no hands but our hands ... . What are we as Christians? Our covenant with God is to be Jesus in the world; and if we are not Jesus, then Jesus is Not. But today is Monday, no sermon. Homily, no preaching s’il te plait, Papa. In my experience in the Episcopal Church, we don't much preach on political hot topics. Not beca...

  Life Itself is Good, and a lot has happened, and does happen, and continues to happen, and will happen as life goes on for whoever is here to live and love.  “Life Itself”, as film critic Roger Ebert titled his memoir, that I loved reading because in Roger’s life I found so many feelings and experiences of my own life. Life Itself is good, the joy and blessing that, in our first holy story, on the sixth day God says let us make אָדָם aDAM in our image, according to our likeness. And in our second holy story, the Lord God forms הָֽאָדָ֗ם ha-aDAM, an earthling, from the dust of the ground, and breathes into us his own Spirit, the breath and gift of life, and sets us free to live and love in our Time. It’s a blessing also that this morning we read from Job, the drama of one man living life to the fullest until life itself overwhelms him. Job could be my hero for defending himself against God, except that when God himself shows up in Person, Job humbly knuckles under to God’s im...

OMG I love this Bay. Supposedly, one can love only creatures (living creatures, or memories of creatures whom one has known), and can only "like" objects, but I don't believe that and neither do you. I love StAndrews Bay, a living Being. The picture is hazy because it's hazy this morning, hazy and humidity 95%. Here on the Florida Gulf Coast the weather, Father Nature, has an ongoing struggle with himself about whether to let go of summer so it can be autumn for a while, or keep on being summer; seldom do we have an autumn leaf spectacular, and some years we get a few hours of winter, or it can be bitter cold for days on end. As a boy, my favorite was summer, because school was out from the end of May to the Tuesday after Labor Day. Grown up and work years I loved the seasons year round except for the snow and ice and shoveling my car out every morning of those cold winters living way up North. Anyway, here's another picture of my Bay, looking west from 7H at the ...