It's a great Time of life. I wish I could be thirty years old at this age and enjoy it for longer. Except that I would choose to live in the America that I loved and once believed I knew as a nation that treasured honor, truth, mutual trust, and integrity. It's evident to me that I never knew us at all. e pluribus unum, but as with any nation, we are not "unum", we are pluribus.      I do recall a church member who said in all seriousness and full conviction, "No one should be allowed to vote against President Reagan". It's no longer comical to remember. Nor, apparently, a unique political point of view.     The Christmas creche, Nativity scene  - - it's so neat. Maybe to me because I've lived in Japan and've always loved oriental things and oriental art. Clipped it off the Geranium Farm website thinking Barbara Cawthorne Crafton won't mind. Her website's always been worthwhile, by the way.       Linda fou...

  Christ has died, Christ is risen. The Third Sunday of Advent is Rose Sunday, Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday.  It's Pink Candle Sunday, but the Pope never imagined it would be Pajama Sunday when, in history, he authorized pink liturgical color for the day instead of penitential purple, to lighten the Lenten feeling of deep penitence that Advent used to hold. It goes with the Proper Introit of the Latin Mass for Advent 3,  "Gaudete in Domino semper"  “Rejoice in the Lord always”.  And we DO rejoice, we ARE happy, Christ has died, Christ is risen - - Christ comes again,      or CAN come again, if you make it so. Stir up your power, O Lord, a “stir-up Collect”, it's called. Brings to mind the old Collect for the Sunday Next Before Advent:  "STIR UP, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded". Stir Up Sunday, fruit of good works, t...

  Good morning or afternoon, dear friends, no, by golly, it's still morning, how about that! As already said, this, Lectionary Year B, prominently features the Gospel according to Mark. As promised, I’m working toward the Sunday morning, not yet, when we take a whirlwind tour through the entirety of it, noticing some of Mark’s idiosyncrasies, and discovering what Mark intends as a whole - - because it’s not really a Book of Snippets from which we read selected bits and pieces Sunday after Sunday; Mark has an agenda, a complete story, and Mark is breathlessly in a hurry to tell it to you. We’ll get to all that, it’ll be after the Holidays and into the New Year. Maybe we’ll treat it as a real life Epiphany during the season that begins January 6 with the coming of the magi and Jesus’ baptism. For now, we’re still in Advent, and in Sunday School class tomorrow I want to talk about something that some of you have raised more than once, that is in fact an Advent theme. It’s moshiach, th...

       News of the day, cover story in PCNH Entertainer, Hunt's Oyster Bar acquired by the Abrams of Tarpon Dock Seafood and changing little for now, or perhaps slowly. As long as the oysters are good, raw and fried. I wish Hunt's would add fried mullet to the menu, as post-H.Michael Captain's Table is a slow, if major but nevertheless work in progress more than two years later: they were the only place in StAndrews with fried mullet on the menu.      Gene's Oyster Bar some days, and if you were sitting on a stool there when the fresh mullet arrived in a bucket, tails still flapping. Had it there several times, always got a whole mullet, three pieces including the backbone.      In my years growing up as a Panama City native, if you ordered fried fish in a restaurant, you got fried mullet. "Oh but it's a Tourist Capital now, and they don't like mullet, an acquired taste" are you kidding me, that's a factor? ...

Smoky out, is someone burning, or is this from the renewed wildfires out west in Pacific Coast states? Temp early was 37°F felt like 32, now it's 63°F and nice. There are some things I'd like to ask my mother, and other things my father. An age-specific experience is that I can no longer ask the older generation their memories, because most anyone older than me is dead, and those who aren't cannot remember. Ten years ago when I was only 75, I asked mama about various memories, and glad I did. Wish I'd made a list and asked my father, but his July 1993 death came sudden and unexpected, when it'd never occurred to me that the clock was running on Time for conversation. Dying three years younger than I am this morning, h e enjoyed sharing memories, and I hearing them. One memory field was about Bay Fisheries that, from the nineteen-teens, was where Landmark Condominiums' boat marina is now. Map shows the pilings still there more than a hundred years later. Also the...

  Tide's out, Redfish Point is bathed in the morning sun, outside it's chilly, at least to me, 37°F and a 10 mph wind from the north that makes it feel, my weather app says, like 32°F, so wintry. Near freezing tonight says the weather lady on Chanel #11, sic but recalling how romantic I felt myself to be as a teenager, giving my girl a tiny bottle of Chanel #5.  But back to today, I'm not a cold weather person, as I learned every cold morning those years of bitter cold dawns in Rhode Island, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and even Northern Virginia. On here I've posted at least once my memory of the morning at Fort Adams in Newport, RI: find my car in the lumping mounds of snow parked with other cars where yesterday there had been a curb, shovel it out of the snow the 2 AM snowplow piled on it overnight, scrape open the door handle and lock, pour boiling water on ...

  As Monday is my +Time morning to publish the lectionary readings for the upcoming Sunday, here they are (scroll down) for 13 December, Advent 3 Year B. Our gospel yesterday was Mark's view of the appearance of John bar Zechariah baptizing folks in the River Jordan. For next Sunday we have Gospel John's take on that scenario. They're somewhat different of course, that happens any time two or three or four people write about the same event, whether it's a car crash or a Bible story, who was there, and who said what, and who didn't stop for the red light.  In the cases of Bible stories in the four gospels, it makes for fun and interesting discussion in Sunday School class, including exploring why the differences and how the evangelists' agenda varied. Maybe we'll do something like that in SS class next Sunday morning, IDK, it's a little early to say. At any event, a key theme for both Mark and Gospel John here is to show how vigorously John the Baptist re...