Death, Killing, Dying, Running Again Several tasks to accomplish today. Impossible to prioritize them, because each one is more important than any of the others. In fact, each one is more important than all of the others combined. Interestingly -- a great word and greatly overused in that whatever it is employed to introduce is never interesting, especially when it is phrased "interestingly enough" -- the electronic age has no limits. In the news, Karzai’s government of fools releases prisoners who will go straight back into the fight, and as I read along I notice I’m reading The International News . WTH? Checking, it’s Pakistani media, and its news is almost entirely about people killing other people in that large part of the world where anarchy and chaos are not figures of speech but horrifically, incredibly, everyday life , the way it is. Should we keep American troops there? Only if we want Afghanistan to be the front line against terrorism instead of Times Squ...

Camels and Sarah’s Beemer Ah, I love this sort of thing with Bible study, discovering an anachronism, this latest about domesticated camels not fitting into what we may always have imagined about the life and times of Bible heroes. Admittedly, I love it less that sensationalist media seeking readers pick up a tidbit and suggest that a new discovery trashes everything, but that’s the way life is, and we love excitement, and we especially love a scandal if we can stir one up, and besides it makes for discussion in Sunday School. Nothing makes Sunday School more fun than an unanswered question and lack of consensus.  The press has taken us here before. Recently, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene was interesting but not as sensationalist as was hyped, same with the Gospel of Judas. A truth is that we have dozens of gospels, and they are fascinating to read and explore and figure out why they may have been read early on but later excluded from the canon. In one resurrection sto...

I know better than to talk like this. Everyone who knows me knows this about me. The Gospel, in my mind, is not in the slightest teeniest least about believing that I save myself and make myself “as sure for heaven as if I were already there,” to quote one late preacher, by walking down the aisle and accepting Christ as my personal Savior;  nor is the Gospel in the scantiest piddling measure about standing and reciting creeds of ancient doctrine. The Gospel is neither about “saving myself” nor about my personal piety.  The Gospel is singularly and specifically found on the lips of a wandering first-century Galilean sage, evangelist, healer who said, "The first commandment is this ... you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: you are to love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31). And who said, “A new commandment ...

Food for ... A toss what’s opened first on MacBook each morning. Google News, quick scroll down to see what happened catastrophic overnight. All’s well in Sochi so far. Mizzou football star NFL prospect comes out gay is top of the news again today, who cares? the homophobes: always your first clue who’s in the closet. Danish zoo slaughters giraffe for lion and tiger food, who cares? everybody. We’d have taken Marius for a pet here, he could have kept our palm trees trimmed. We could also use a koala, to keep the eucalyptus tree from getting so tall.  Next, email, dozen or fifteen, maybe one personal, answer it then check word-a-day. Anu Garg got me this morning: grok is a word and it means I totally get it? I don’t think so, since when are choking noises words? NYT and TWP, congress fighting, over what this time? Want me to settle congressional hash? I need one hour as supreme dictator, then grant myself a pardon and retire, guaranteed.  Someone said you learn ...

We are set up to cope, aren’t we, our emotional makeup can pretty well handle just about whatever comes along, within reason, if our mental state and physical condition are fairly stable, eh? But dear wives of two dear priest friends died this weekend, and it’s close. The death of Zoe Bush on Friday was a shock, she had fallen, her injury proved fatal, Zoe died in hospital in Birmingham.  Saturday afternoon brought a call that Celia Floyd just died, and when I phoned Fr. Chuck he said she died in her sleep. This leaves me stunned in a way that is not only emotional, but in a physical way that on reflection is not foreign to me but quite close. My mind wouldn’t accommodate. Even with a long walk and a stop at MLP where I confronted my shock in 2012 when Norman died and again soon after when Bill died, and a sit-down on my steep front steps to look out at the Bay, shock wouldn’t subside, the news wouldn’t “take.” This morning I still need a think. So, this blog post is for myself...

Couple of unrelenting frustrations, the blasted spinning beach ball keeps showing up on the desktop of my MacBook and freezing all action.  Thinking there may be too many applications or files open, I keep closing everything, but may move all but the most active two or three files to my cloud site to see if that helps. Help on line says run DiskWarrior and add more RAM. When I had regular PCs nothing was a problem, I could run all that stuff and take the machines apart and put them back together, add parts and replace parts. A couple of times, I even took two or three bad computers apart and cannibalized into one working machine. But in nearly four years, I've mastered nothing with the Apples, which I switched to for security reasons, not because they're easier or better, they're not. And they sure as azalea aren't cheaper.  Other thing, in the past few days the computer has gone off extremely slow on line. Not just the laptop, it’s my iPad and Linda’s iPad...

For my birthday, Joe gave me the verb exfoliate and the noun to do it. About three feet long and a foot wide, it’s a rough, waffled plastic sheet for scrubbing my back. Joe was looking for blue but pink was available and my back doesn’t mind. Hearing I like it, for Christmas he gave me three bottles of scented body wash: eucalyptus spearmint, lavender chamomile, and my favorite, orange ginger, labeled “Energy.” Dribble body wash down the scrubber, pull back and forth across the backside and smear all over, great fragrance. An old man can smell nice even if he isn’t.  Trying to be less crochety with blog posts, sometimes returning apologetically the next day to edit out in your face language. On the other hand, in Australia one morning years ago I went in to the office to hear colleagues sharply criticizing the managing director because he’d apologized for something he’d said the day before. Their consensus was that apologizing makes a man look weak and diminishes his authority...