Our lectionary gives us a couple of especially interesting lessons for this morning, three counting the response to 1 Samuel 1, which fittingly is the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2. Timed and timely for our seasonal approach to Advent, both are reminiscent, and likely inspired Luke’s narrative about the origins of John the Baptist and the responsive Song of Zechariah. Which lead into his, Luke’s, Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Song, the Magnificat, which hopefully we shall sing Advent 4, sometimes called “Mary Sunday.” For a steeped in tradition Anglican Chant-o-phile, there is only one proper version and tune for the Magnificat, the one we sang at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in the 1930s, 40s, and early 50s, but the last church I served that knew it by heart and sang it well was Trinity, Apalachicola through the 1980s and 90s; and I daresay it has long since slipped from their tongues. There was a time when I knew and taught that Anglicanism was a sound, a sound in ...

an obscene eucharist Saturday, 20151114, sunrise. Somehow, it seems sacrilegious, almost obscene to be alive and safe after last night in Paris. The blasphemy of religious perversion so unspeakably evil that its cup of praise and thanksgiving is the blood of innocents.  An act of war, postures Hollande, though neither France nor we will declare nor conduct war. If old age is not for sissies, war is not for the timid and reluctant who have had no taste for it since WW2. For any but fools, the object of war is not localized police action but total victory that goes to the source and necessitates contempt for boundaries, deaths of countless innocents, not to say risk of global annihilation and the damnation of history down The Road .  The undeclared war that began 9/11 again creeps westward, who is next, what does it take to enrage us to fierce determination, and it will be interesting to see whether America elects as Leader some idiot whose idea of victory is to ...

Fifty-seven degrees F. out, pleasant after my hottest summer in memory, when at this predawn hour I would open the door to an oven’s blast of headache hot. But this is nice, should be good news for this morning’s walk.  Square of dark chocolate melting on tongue with a sip of hot black. On the bookshelf beside my riser chair is a small stash of several chocolates, as carefully rationed out as my parents used gasoline during WW2.  Frustrated yesterday with losing the cursor on my MacBook desktop yet one more time again, I googled “can I make the cursor larger” and sure enough, instruction came up. Click the apple, click system preferences, click accessibility, and slide the cursor size bar to the right. I slid it all the way to large and now the cursor is so large it’s obnoxious, but I don’t expect to lose it again. Went for my six-monthly dermatology  appointment yesterday afternoon, got zapped on both ears, both arms, a cheek spot or two, and carpet bombed o...

What, another beautiful sunrise developing before my eyes, right in front of me, though the iPhone camera doesn’t even begin to touch its magnificence. Two planets high in the east will vanish before reaching their zenith. That gray cloud has grown dark and the sun may tint it with purple before it goes black and moves on off to the north.  The splash in the Bay, then another splash that I thought was a large mullet leaping, turns out to be a lone pelican. Now there are two birds, and here comes a white egret. This is real, I can see it, I’m watching. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” but I’m seeing. Blest at this age still to have not only ears, but eyes to see, nose to smell, tongue to taste, and these dancing fingers to touch. There was a gospel question at church last night, whether it matters about Mark, who wrote approx 65 to 75 A.D. that Jesus back in 33 A.D. prophesied the fall of the Temple that happened in 70 A.D. Whether the timing, the chronolo...

One of my most enjoyable books in memory a friend gave me for my birthday, a biography of C.S. Lewis. It’s one of those books that I can put down for days or even a couple weeks until an inviolable hour comes up when there’ll be absolutely no interruptions and I can read in one of four really good sit-down places I have here in the high condo and fade into some part of the twentieth century. Yesterday afternoon I was able to do that before we went to the church for our monthly gathering of the EfM Alum group. It’s always a highlight of my month, and last night we had an enjoyable program and a delicious supper of lamb and three decent red wines.  Ten years ago next month it was, December 2005 I took the entire HNES middle school to the opening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe at a local theater. We used attendance and the class discussion the next day as our final exam for the fall semester. This morning I got to reminiscing about it and th...

Racial issues again, ongoing, still and always in Missouri as students arise and the president of the state’s main university system is forced to resign, followed according to this morning’s news by the chancellor of the main campus where the instant racial unrest has broken out. I don’t understand. They seem still behind where we were in the South of my childhood three quarters of a century ago, a terrible place to have been from which we have broken free and escaped, at least in my observation and perception. I don’t understand. In business years ago, meeting an Australian client, I used to stay at an inn, Marriott as I recall, across from the Arch in St. Louis in front and on the side next to a stadium where, from my favorite room's window, I could watch the Cardinals playing. I loved going to Missouri for that reason. Long years before that, at Navy OCS in Newport, I made a close Navy friend who came from Missouri. Raised in a Polish ethnicity in St. Louis. That was 1957, ...

After arising about 0215 and for an exhausting if happy morning, yesterday’s Sunday Nap turned out a disappointment, about an hour instead of the three hours I’d anticipated, and all the way through it I was pretty sure I was awake and never went to sleep at all. Then awake to edit and post yesterday morning's what passed for a homily. Not a sermon, a homily is a short commentary on scripture that has just been read and heard, the widow's mite.  Anyway, if I’m crabby this morning, that’s just the way it is. Oops, can’t be crabby today: Monday, customarily my Pastoral Day Off all my years as a parish priest; and not only is it raining out, there’s the lightning and thunder I’ve been missing. So it’s happy, I love a rainy day, and it’s quite cool out. Last evening I sat outside on the porch until late, neglected to bring chair cushions in and now they’re soaked. Judging by the water sitting on the table and the point at which my socks got wet, wind must have blown too, quite b...