GAWGEOUS OR WHAT?

 

One dozen lovely golden roses. I'll tell you all about them tomorrow.

HELP!

 

Who will come to my house and help me set up my new computer? I look at the parts to assemble the monitor stand, which are only about three in number, and I already feel defeated.

 

I revise my original question: Who will come to my house to set up my computer for me? If you're going to ask, ask big.

'IN MY BEGINNING IS MY END'

 

Above is the National 9/11 Memorial pool, with the names of all who died in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Below are the beginning and the final verses of the second of T. S. Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.

EAST COKER

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
....

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

WE REMEMBER

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

HENRY PURCELL'S 'AN EVENING HYMN' - EMMA KIRBY

Emma Kirby 'An Evening Hymn' - Henry Purcell

Now, now that the sun hath veil'd his light
And bid the world goodnight;
To the soft bed my body I dispose,
But where shall my soul repose?
Dear, dear God, even in Thy arms,
And can there be any so sweet security!
Then to thy rest, O my soul!
And singing, praise the mercy
That prolongs thy days.
Alleluia!

ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS TO RESIGN?

 

From Jonathan Wynne-Jones at the Telegraph:

Dr Rowan Williams is understood to have told friends he is ready to quit the highest office in the Church of England to pursue a life in academia.

The news will trigger intense plotting behind the scenes over who should succeed the 61-year-old archbishop, who is not required to retire until he is 70.
....

Sources close to the archbishop say he will leave after the Queen's Diamond Jubilee next June and having seen the Church finally pass legislation to allow women to become bishops.

It is understood that Trinity College, Cambridge, is preparing to create a professorship for Dr Williams, who studied theology and was a chaplain at the university.

After Dr Williams rams the Anglican Covenant through General Synod of the Church of England, he will leave the wreckage to be cleaned up by his successor.

The archbishop wants to see through Synod the establishment of women bishops, but will women bishops serve with the same authority as male bishops?

This could allow for John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, to succeed him in a caretaker role as the Ugandan-born cleric is one year older than the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Bishop Chartres has been telling clergy that such a move could be beneficial for the Church, though the Bishop of London would also be one of the front-runners himself.

The word from friends in England on the two names mentioned above is, 'Nooo!'

H/T to Peter Owen at Thinking Anglicans.

FEELING LOST

 

Working on my PC Notebook is just not the same. I'm lost without my desktop PC. My old computer is at the store to have all the material transferred to the new model we purchased yesterday. I feel so scrunched working on the laptop, but it is something and better than nothing.

Added note: The sound is not good.

'REJOICE IN THE LORD ALWAYS'

The Apostle Paul - Rembrandt - National Gallery of Art, Washinton DC

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:4-7

The passage above from today's Lectionary is one of my favorites, one which I have committed to memory because I speak or call to mind the words so very often in times of stress and trouble. Sometimes, after I call the passage to mind, I think, 'It's easy for you to say, Paul,' but, in my heart of hearts, I know Paul's life was not easy, and he came to a tragic end because of his zeal for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He spoke the words in faith despite the suffering he had already endured and his knowledge that more suffering would surely come his way.

And I speak the words in faith that they may become a reality in my life.

Image from Wikipedia.

GAYER GARMENTS

 

1940 English ad.

Posted without further commentary, except to say: Don't blame me. Blame Lapin.

PAR FOR THE COURSE

No, neither Grandpère nor I are golfers. The title is a metaphor for our lives. If Grandpère would submit to an evaluation, I'm fairly sure he would be diagnosed with ADHD. My friend Cathy thinks I have ADD, and I tend to agree with her. The diagnosis would explain a lot about my life. An instance: My grandmother, who was an excellent pianist, tried to teach me to play the piano, but as soon as I moved on to playing with two hands, I was blocked. I could not concentrate and coordinate playing different keys and rhythms with two hands. My grandmother and I tried and tried, because I wanted to play the piano, but I could not do it. End of piano lessons. It's quite difficult for me to focus on more than one thing at a time. You know the saying about walking and chewing gum? I'm not quite that bad, but you get the idea.

Today was Grandparents Day at my grandson's school, or so Grandpère and I thought. However, neither of us paid close attention to the letter from the school, which advised that only grandparents whose names started with 'M' to the end of the alphabet were to be at the school today. The 'B's were next Friday. Of course, Grandson was not in church for the mass where we were to meet him, because we were there on the wrong day. Someone went to get GS out of his classroom, and the authorities were going to permit him to stay with us, because other grannys and grandpas had come on the wrong day, too, and all was to be cool.

Grandson didn't fall far from his grandpa's and grandma's tree, as he has ADHD, too. GS glides more smoothly through life when routines are followed, and GP and I were out of sync with the school's routine, so he really did not want to be with us today. Plus I believe we may have embarrassed him by showing up on the wrong day. He's 11, in the 5th grade. We decided we'd let him off the hook and walked him back to his classroom. However, his teacher urged him back out to the mass with us, but when we were outside, GS began to tear up. I said, 'You really, really don't want us to be here today, do you?'

He said, 'No, I want you next Friday, but now my teacher probably won't let me back in the classroom.'

I said, 'Come with us, and we'll explain to your teacher, and maybe she'll let you stay.' And she did, so we'll return next Friday. Oh dear! We will have to do better!

We'd planned to go to the computer store after the Grandparents Day activities, so on we went a bit earlier to buy a new computer before our old machine not only crashes frequently, but dies forever. We accomplished the task, and the store will be transferring my material to the new computer. For now, I'm functioning on my laptop without all my stuff, documents, pictures, music, all of which were difficult to use on the old computer anyway, because if I had more than 3 tabs open, I was asking for a crash.

Our son, Grandson's dad, joined us for lunch, and when we told him the story, he said, 'Oh no! With him, the routines must be followed.'

There you have it - the story of half our day.