Somewhere this morning already, I read the assertion, "life is sacred", which surprised me, and it occurs to me that I agree: so very sacred in fact, that even my own life isn't mine, doesn't belong to me, but belongs to creation and Creator, a sacrament of grace and challenge; who am I to claim life as my own, or, more, to waste it.  Either by wasting life's Time, or by ending life early.  I have, and do, loved and love, many and much, including people and what I see around me as in the hymn verse I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven, the glorious sun’s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea around the old eternal rocks. If you don't know the hymn, called by its tune name St Patrick's Breastplate , my condolences, it's the greatest, one of, powerful and moving. We have such beautiful summer clouds. Most day...

Yes, it's a little late, but IDC, I'll post it anyway, Sunday School this morning, usual posting let slip because, Madge being away, class was not to be live-streamed. We talked about Mary Magdalene, read the New Testament references to her, and read and discussed the non-canonical Gospel about her, named for her, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.  Mary was of Magdala, a prosperous fishing village on the Sea of Galilee. Mary has had a bad rap in the church owing to a pope's lack of scholarly insight back in the sixth century, ignorantly connecting her with an unnamed unsavory woman in a story just before Mary is first named in Luke's gospel. Following which, Mary was negatively characterized by artists over the ages.  The dozen or so Bible references don't tell us much about her  Mark 15:40, 15:47, 16:1, (16:9 not original to Mark) Matthew 27:56, 27:61, 28:1 Luke 8:2, 24:10 John 19:25, 20:1, 20:18 Other than that she was one of any number of women who followed Jesus...

  July the Seventeenth. My mother died ten years ago this morning, two months and ten days past her ninety-ninth birthday. A rainy Sunday. As I backed my car out of the carport at the Old Place, headed to Holy Nativity for the early service, Linda came out to the car in the drizzling wet and stopped me. "Community called. Your mother just died." Plans change. In the long run it doesn't matter. I had meant to drive out to see her after church, as, to rationalize myself, I did once or twice every day for weeks. It doesn't help life or guilt to have your mother in a care center and her upset because you won't take her home. But your best  plans don't matter to Time.   She had been in the rehab center since her most recent fall at home, unsteady, deaf, blind, failing. But dying, death: was it expected? When you are five it doesn't occur to you that your mother will not live forever. When you are seventy-five, as I was that steamy morning, you are pretty sure w...

  Starring Harvey’s beloved family, this funeral is also for my fellow Florida Gator and fellow Naval officer - - deeply loved and respected by those around him, as I witnessed on my visits to their home during Harvey’s last days as an earthling. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”, and Harvey is off on his journey into wherever and whatever God has in mind for us -> in my Father’s house are many - - μοναὶ lodgings, rooms, dwellings, abodes - - mansions: I go to prepare one for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you I return and take you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also. And where I go, ye know, and the way ye know! But WAIT: WHAT?! A mystery, a great mystery! Because we are practical beings, like Thomas, “Lord, don’t MESS with us: we do NOT know where you are going, how can we know the way?!  Jesus says, and to me this is chief and foremost among his I AM sayings, “ Ἐγώ εἰμι   I AM - the Way”. The blessed assurance that, ...

  Good morning. Though Patricia Violet Bernett would expect the rector to officiate her service, it’s summer, even priests need time to rest, and Father Rian is away.  But not seeing myself as a stranger here, my name is Tom, I grew up a child of this parish from birth in 1935, baptized and confirmed here, acolyte, member of the youth group throughout my teens. In the early 1950s, with Father Tom Byrne, the bishop asked my family and several other families who lived in The Cove to establish a new parish on the other side of town, and when I came home from college Spring 1955 I found myself a member of Holy Nativity. Where now, in retirement, I help the rector as needed, and manage the adult Sunday School class.  So, apologies for the rector’s absence, but take comfort: the priest helping you celebrate Pat’s life has known and loved St Andrew’s Church lifelong, more than 85 years. I did not know Pat, but I do know the Lord Jesus, beloved Savior and God whose Word cannot be...

Someone said, and I'm inclined to agree, that it's a sign of the End Times, heralding the End of Days, when all manner of apocalyptic events begin to unroll along with the stars falling and the sun and moon going dark and the beasts of the sea charging ashore and destroying a third of the earth.  Yes, it's mac'n, macaroni and cheese ice cream and the question is whether it's just an epiphany of what's now underway, or is itself the trigger that set the Apocalypse into motion, destruction of the Universe and Time itself as creation's little lights begin winking out, the firmament going dark. Not to be distracted, but speaking of heaven, I smell bread: Linda is baking bread, two loaves of incomparably delicious gluten-free, its aroma floating across, filling 7H with temptation. My progress toward qualifying to keep my 9 August checkup appointment without being chastised is going well, and I don't need to be thinking of warm bread with pats of yellow butter...

Didn't mean to, but blogging, if I can hold my thoughts together, during breakfast: mug of black coffee and what I call a "yogurt lollipop", couple tablespoons Fage plain 5% yogurt licked off one of my teaspoons. "My" teaspoons are the shell-fiddle-thread silver pattern I wanted 65 years ago when we were selecting at Cogburn's on Harrison Avenue downtown, and found out that it wasn't up to me.  Linda and her mother chose Burgundy for the wedding and she uses that and the Francis I flatware from her mother. And for the china, as I've whined here before, "Blue Florentine" that, around the border, features serpents with their tongues weaving in and out of the eye-sockets of ox skulls that still have their fur. No, really: Having suffered that for long years, when eBay debuted I started looking and finally ordered, used, two patterns of the china I prefer, white with gold rim, made in Germany, dinner plates only. Also an odd flatware mix of pla...