Below is the gospel reading for this Sunday morning, The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, on which I want to comment briefly even though we may hear a sermon on it day after tomorrow. I just wanted to get this in. And yes, I see it's Friday, but if I change my mind and, doing a blogpost on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday, decide to add Friday from Time to Time, so what?  The gospel reading begins "Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who ...". Jesus doesn't say Life is like this, he says the kingdom of heaven is like this. If Life tried to be like this, the United Farm Workers union would earn our union dues negotiating and striking to make everything fair, and they would win. By every human standard, the parable describes unfairness. But God isn't bound by human standards; and the parable proves that God does not claim to be Fair. Evidently, fairness is not one of God's values. In fact, as Jesus presents God, God isn't even Just, God i...

There's usually beach down there, but with the hurricane surge tide I'm looking straight down into the Bay as I read our apt Collect for this coming Sunday, to pray this morning, as rainwater from Hurricane Sally floods in under our new sliding door and in around our new Bay side windows in the living room: The Collect.  Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. A few minutes ago I went outside on 7H porch to snap a pic of the storm rushing Bay water up against us seven levels down, but for some reason it didn't take. Obviously, I was too much minding getting soaking wet in the fourteen seconds I was out there, and not paying enough attention to the camera on my cellphone. Rain is driving hard, really...

"The Body of Christ, the Bread of heaven" we hear as the Communion wafer is laid in our hand. Or, in some Episcopal parishes the aroma of fresh baked bread may fill the sanctuary on Sunday morning: my parishes did that and we treasured the joy of breaking warm bread that someone had baked and brought fresh from the oven, memories that decades later still move my heart and stir my soul. At Trinity, when Mary George Williams of Greek heritage, her father Nick George was the dearest of men, and her three little children adorable, baked the bread, especially at Easter and Christmas, it was a huge round loaf that Mary decorated with Greek symbols for Christ and red cherries, and as little children knelt at the Altar rail I'd hear excitedly, "Father Tom, can I have a cherry?!" That memory never fades. Often, the wafer that's laid into our hands at the Communion rail fits the likely first reaction to the מָ֣ן ה֔וּא man-hu manna that morning in the wilderness with M...

y’hVah (is) an Ish Milchamah  y’hVah shmo the Lord (is) a man of war   the Lord (is) his name Exodus 15:3 Kindly this Sunday morning suffer me to open with a meandering aside about Normal.  From time to Time over my years I’ve thought how nice it would be to have lived in the good old days when my grandfather was a boy and everything was Normal as it always had been, and  America was few cities, not so large, not so many of us, small towns and rural, many people living on farms. Families in town had their own chickens for eggs and Sunday dinner, a cow for milk. My grandparents always had chickens, and in The Old Place a cow that wandered in the woods beyond where 9th Street is now. A well with a hand pump and maybe a windmill pump, and a cistern to catch rainwater. There were no airplanes, and while automobiles were a fascinating novelty, they were not to be depended on for long distance, so to travel far, even from here to Pensacola, people went by train, and trains...

Wednesday then Thursday still bothering me; something bible oriented or orientated. Writing with breakfast out here on 7H porch, second mug of black and an anchovy sandwich. Watched MV Progreso arrive, one toot of her horn to get the attention of a small sailboat becalmed near the channel and a private pleasure craft crossing the channel safely distant in her path.  The Bay clears, then arrives a small yellow boat, makes a u-turn just off 7H, and heads east back toward Millville with the Mercury outboard motor that's being checked out.  A man wades out into the Bay at my feet seven levels down, pulling a cast net. Hope he gets what he's after, bait for later or mullet for breakfast. My father used to say nothing was better than fresh caught mullet, fried, with either hot black coffee or an ice cold Coca-Cola. I'm not into soda pop, but hot and black, yes. Here's that Romans reading - The Epistle for the upcoming Sunday, September 13, Proper 19A:  Romans 14:1-12: Welcome...

                  We have delightful scripture appointed for next Sunday, 13 September 2020, Proper 19A. First is the story of Israel crossing the Red Sea (or, the Sea of Reeds, which we don't like as well because in the mind's eye it is less dramatic for the bad guys to get stuck in the mud, and far less satisfying than to have our savior יְהֹוָ֖ה suddenly close the ocean in on them!). All manner of things in there for a Sunday School class to ponder.           And for a bit of a change, the Lectionary framers offer us a choice of readings as our Response to that good old-time Sunday School bible story. Either response is apt, but if I were choosing, it would be the second one, and we would stand and shout-out sing The Song of Miriam, which not only is one of our canticles set to singable music, but also is a joyous, joyful, loud, clap, and pump the air with your fist victorious hymn that was a favorite of my c...