As I posted on Facebook this morning, I looked out the front door this morning and saw something I haven’t seen for over a week; dry pavement. It is amazing how significant the insignificant can become isn’t it? It is a cloudy forty three degrees this morning but at least it isn’t raining. Sadly though, this is only a brief respite between fronts and we can expect showers again on and off and maybe, —- can you believe it —- snow showers on Easter Sunday. Winter ran forty five days late in starting and it appears it will run forty five days late in ending. We are looking at maybe four days of rain again next week and that is the beginning of our “spring severe weather” season. Yay!!!!

It is Good Friday for those of of the Christian Faith. For many it will mean another church service tonight. It will for us to be sure. PastorArt has tonight’s service though. For restaurant owners it means selling a lot of fish sandwiches today. I’ve never looked into the meaning of having fish on Good Friday but it is something that I’ve always been acquainted with. I think it is a Catholic practice that has carried over in to the Protestant world. I need to Google that. I just know it is something that we have done because we weren’t supposed to eat meat on Good Friday. It is another one of those religious things that you will not find in the Bible. I get amused sometimes at the things we do for religious reasons that are not biblically supported. As far back as I can remember, even in elementary school, they served fish on Friday or a toasted cheese sandwich and tomato soup. BTW, a lasted cheese sanwich with a bowl of tomato soup is a childhood favorite. It is one of the few meals that my mother made that I actually liked.

I did the 11:00 pm shift at the church last night for the prayer vigil. I got home around 12:15 am and as I walked by the sun porch I thought I saw something outside the window. I flipped on the light and there was Rocky Raccoon having a midnight snack at the backyard buffet. I invited him to leave and told him we were closed for the night. He went lumbering off across the yard, stopping every twenty feet or so to see if I was still watching.

This afternoon I’m taking communion to a parishioner who can’t make it to church this Easter. Bless her heart, she’s probably 90 and has come down with shingles. She has been out of church for several weeks and I know she misses it terribly. She is one of those who simply never misses except for something like this. She was one of my Sunday school teachers when I was growing up and so was her husband. He passed away some years ago.

The sun is shining brightly now and I’m going to just sit here and enjoy it and give thanks for it. I hope you have a blessed day and a blessed Easter. Peace.

I thought for a moment this morning that the rain had stopped. I was concerned that the arc was going to hit dry-dock. But noooooo! The rain is back and promises to be here in an on and off fashion through tonight.

Maundy Thursday; it is a Holy day and the designated day of The Last Supper which is also the beginning of the holy sacrament we Christians call Communion. We shall participate in Holy Communion tonight as part of our Maundy Thursday service. Then at 9:00 pm we’ll begin an all night prayer vigil at the church with people swapping out every half an hour until 9:00 am tomorrow. I’m signed up for the 11:00 pm watch. Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, doesn’t practice a lot of ritual but Easter is extremely significant in our faith. It is the very basis for our belief in an eternal after-life. The style of worship for our denomination runs from the very traditional, which I like, to the very contemporary, which I can tolerate a little bit of but am not crazy about. The argument of course is do you do what is popular and showy because you think it might attract a younger crowd or do you stand by the roots of your church and traditions that have worked for decades. There are valid arguments either way.

I met last night with our “role players” for the Tenebrae service tonight. We got everybody a costume and went over the roles and duties. It didn’t take long and it went very well. I hope that at service time it isn’t pouring down rain. I expect we will have fifty or so at the service. I’d hate to see it pour down at service time and people decide not to get out. We’ve already decided to move our Sunrise service indoors because of rain and soggy ground.

I have three squirrels out here this morning grabbing breakfast. There have been a few birds of differing varieties but it has been rather sporadic. There have been a couple of cardinals, fiches and starlings and that is about it except for the robin that is loving floating earthworms.

My coffee cup is empty so I guess I better fill it and maybe fix a pan of cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Have a wonderful day. Be thankful for your blessings and share them with others. Peace.

This waking up early and being comfortable with it is getting annoying. I think I have forgotten that I’m supposed to be retired or at least semi-so. There is no where I have to be until 10:00 am but at 06:30 I was wide awake. The problem is that I hate to hear the sound of an alarm clock and I almost always will wake up well before it is to go off. I guess it is an internal alarm thing.

Again this morning I’m listening to the pitter patter of raindrops on my roof. It is a light rain for the moment but will send heavy rain in a few waves throughout the day. But this is a gentle rain that will either make you drift off to sleep or —- make you have to go to the bathroom; drip, drip, drip. My guests don’t seem to mind it at all out in the back yard buffet. They are just satisfied that the buffet has been refilled. Finches, cardinals, wrens, starlings, doves, and woodpeckers fill the aviary list and of course life would not be complete without a squirrel or two. I noticed that the Goldfinches have completely turned to their summer bright yellow now. They make a beautiful contrast to the otherwise gray morning. The trees are starting to show more and more signs of leafing out and the Bradford Pear trees around the neighborhood are all starting to bloom.

I’m asking for prayers for my son-in-law, Jim, (Julie’s husband). He was taken to the emergency room yesterday with chest pains and numbness in his left arm. They ran a lot of tests and everything seemed to be okay but he is supposed to make an appointment for some follow-up testing to see if he maybe has some arterial blockage. It isn’t surprising that he would have a problem. He is a total carnivore and wouldn’t let a salad cross his lips.  The cardiologist is supposed to call the ER and set up an appointment for some tests.

Tonight we have Tenebrae practice and then tomorow is Maundy Thursday. Hopefully the service will go well and be the with experience I want it to be for everyone. But we are going to be spending a lot of time at the church for the five days. Or maybe it would be more correct to sat we are going to be doing a lot of running back and forth to the church.

One assumes certain things about people and one of my assumptions is that the people that read my blog are of the Christian faith. If you are, I celebrate your belief with you and pray for your continued  faith journey. If you are not a professed Christian, then it is my prayer that you will develope a relationship with the Lord God who is responsible for your very existence on this planet. I also pray that you will take that relationship one step further and accept Jesus Christ as the way to salvation and eternal life. Take a chance! Read the New Testament. Study what it means to have a life based upon the teachings of Jesus and open yourself up to the peace that being a Christian can bring. The wonderful thing is —- you have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing so. So, that is my Easter prayer for anyone who may be struggling with life.

Have a blessed week.

Happy Tuesday my Friends. I’m not quite sure where Monday went but it was over before I knew it. Actually I wrote about three lines yesterday and then was interrupted and never got back to writing. The interruption though was well worth it; a parishioner came in and needed to talk. Those are good moments and part of why I do this job. I’m not a trained counselor but I am a trained listener and usually that is all people really want in the first place.

It is a fairly warm but totally cloudy morning. We’re in the middle of one of our “spring events” which means rain and more rain. There is no use whining about it; it happens every year and every year we get to the point of wishing it would stop. It is warm enough to make us anxious to get outside and wet enough to keep us from it. I need to get out there and rake up all of the sunflower residue tha the guests have dropped on the ground all winter. Every time I go out to do anything, I’m tracking that stuff back in the house. Julie and Jim will probably come over this eweekend and I know their dogs are going to track a bunch of it in too. It can’t be helped.

The bird feeders are not just empty they are EMPTY!!!! Before the rain starts today, I have to get out there and fill at least some of them. Th eup side of it though is that the birds are eating off of the ground and cleaning up some of their own mess. But the neighbor’s black cat was through here this morning and was a bit more interested in my guests than I wanted it to be. Once it hit the crouch and stalking position outside my door, I run it off. But, I have a bluejay out there doing it’s “whining” call as I refer to it. It sounds so pathetic sitting there on an empty feeder telling the world what a poor host I am. LOL

I took home communion to a couple yesterday and hope to do so again tomorrow for another lady. People seem to be grateful that I do that. Many don’t drive anymore and can’t get out. Our church people though are very good at not forgetting our shut-ins. It is a wonderful ministry tha they perform by going by  or calling our shut-ins. When I visit nursing homes, it is so sad to see folks that are so obviously never visited.

Going to stop here and put my garden shoes on and go feed my birds before it rains. I pray you will have a blessed day. This is Christian Holy Week. I urge you to stay in contact with the Lord. Peace.

Good morning on this “cows and flat rocks” rainy morning. It has been raining fairly steady for the past twelve hours and is expected to go at least until noon steady today. We had a clean-up day planned for the out door chapel today to try to get it ready for next week’s Easter Sunrise Service. However with rain in the forecast for four days next week, I suspect the chapel will be entirely too soggy by next Saturday to even walk in it let alone clean it up. But, who knows —- perhaps the forecast is wrong and we could get a few days of sunshine and warm breezes and that would really help dry it out.

Needless to say, it is a dark morning. I could almost use a light turned on out here in the sun porch. But the light ebbs and flows as the intensity of the rain gets heavier or lighter. I just have to watch what I type and go back and make corrections to spelling more often, One would think that I’d be able to type in the dark as much as I use this IPad keyboard; but that is not the case. I am and will always be a “hunt and peck” kind of guy. Many years ago when the first Battlestar Gallactica was on they showed Loren Greene dictating to a screen and the words writing themselves across the screen. I thought that would be the coolest thing. I suspect that technology exists today —— but I don’t have it.

Despite the rain and the darkened skies, the beauty of the back yard this morning is the daffodils blooming out there in the flowerbed. They are all in bloom this morning and are holding their heads up. That is my extra helping of blessing this morning. And while I don’t have many guests at the backyard buffet this morning, I do have a couple of cute wrens, some gold finches, a cardinal or two and I hear a song sparrow somewhere out there singing a “good morning” to the rest of the world. God is so  good. As the scripture says; This is a day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

I’m going to dodge raindrops this morning and go get a haircut. My hair is just a little long ion the back and it hangs on or over my collar. It drives me a little nuts. I’ve been retired from the Air Force for seventeen years now and I still need my hair to be within regulation. Old habits are hard to break. Except for singing shoes; —- I seldom shine my shoes any more. But then, the military hasn’t worn boots that need to be shined for years. I remember “the old days” when we would spend hours shining our boots just to have the polish melt off of them in the hot sun. The change came with desert warfare.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. I hope to see you in some church. Peace

It’s Friday morning and a relatively warm one at that by comparison to what we have been having. The clouds are thick though. I woke up around 0330 for a necessary trip and it was sprinkling rain. Our weather dudes are forecasting about an inch and a half of rain between now and Sunday morning. We don’t need it. I wish it would dry out but that doesn’t appear to be on the agenda any time soon as they are saying we’ll be having rain most of next week. At least it isn’t snow. North of us in Indianapolis they are looking at more snow this weekend and the east coast is looking at a fourth storm in three weeks. So, I’ll count my blessings and quit complaining —- for a minute or two.   I was still thinking about pulling the snow blade off of the JD but —- well I think it looks good where it is for now. LOL

I have the house to myself. Ms. Kate and her sister are off for a couple of days and nights doing sister stuff. So, the normal peace and quiet around here is even more pregnant. Ms. Kate and I are usually home together but we are on different parts of the house doing our own thing and not a lot of  noise happens around here. I miss the ”sound of her breathing” if that makes any sense and I miss knowing that she’s just bback in the office making cards or something. But I’m the one who encouraged them to go and get out of a winter house where it seems we’ve all been hunkered down for too long. So, I’m here in the sun porch doing my thing and have my Bose playing playing some good Gaither gospel music at a volume that I like.

I finished up my Easter Morning sermon last night and put together the bulletin for that service including the slides to go with it. I’ve sent them on to Karen at the church. I need to go to Target or Office Depot and get a couple of reams of paper so I can print my stuff. I’m going to check on a new printer too. I get so aggravated at my printer which isn’t that old. It tends to grab several pieces of paper at a time when printing and thereby spreading the print over the tops of several pages. It is a problem inherent with this model; because the on-line reviews show a lot of complaints about it and there is no fix.  I think if I get another one I am going to get a laser printer instead of ink jet. Since I’m going to look at printers, I guess I’ll go to Offfice depot.

I think we are having a squirrel reunion here at the buffet this morning. There must be at least ten oif them running around here this morning. Mostly they just chase one another around and then come and go thought the neaighbors yards and trees. Maybe they have spring fever too. The rest of my regular customers are here too so it is a morning of blessings just watching them all. I suspect by tomorrow I will have feeders to fill again.

Sunday begins Holy Week and I pray you will take the opportunity to participate in that at whatever your choice of churrch is. We are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the promise of eternal salvation and life. Take the time to give God praise and worship for those gifts. Peace.

It isn’t often that the “real feel” temperature out side is higher than the actual temperature. But this morning is is a bright and sunny,  thirtytwo degrees with a “real feel” of forty degrees. That’s because we have zero wind this morning. It is a lovely morning. My only buffet guest at the moment is a squirrel who can’t quite figure out how to hang on to the feeder and eat from it at the same time. Meanwhile, on the ground there are a couple of robins, a wren, and some junkos. It won’t be long before the starlings, cardinals, and the rest of the gang will be here.

I just had a “news blurb” pop on to my screen that said the world’s largest collection of ocean garbage is twice the size of the state of Texas. If I may be blunt for a moment, that pisses me off! I know there are a lot of people that care about the environement and work to help improve it not only in this country but in other countries too. But —- there are millions and millions of people who care nothing about more than the square foot of soil they are standing on. And that too goes for every country and culture. I get upset when I drive along and see where somebody has just thrown out a couch or garbage bags or other stuff alongside of the road. What kind of thought process tells a person that doing that is the right thing to do? What kind of thought process says it is okay to just dump our waste into the ocean? One time I was sitting in my car at an amusement park and there was a family from Mexico, (according to thier license plate) and they were “picnicking in the parking lot. They were just throwing any and all of their trash down on the pavement and then the guy emptied out all of the car’s ash trays out onto the pavement. Amazing. I can understand all manner of garbage and debris being washed out into the ocean from something like a tsunami; but to deliberately do it is a crime against God and nature. Going a bit farther out on my rant — I’d bet that if we were somehow able to breathe the pure air that God first created on this planet, our lungs couldn’t handle it because we have evolved and adapted to be able to breathe the polluted crap we’ve created ourselves. Shame on us as human beings. —- Rant is over!

We had our final Lenten meal and Bible study last evening. As I said yesterday, my Sunday school class made soup and sandwiches and it went over well. And —- I still have soup here to eat. Pastor Art finished up his series on The Humor of Christ and it was well received. I do like to hear him preach. Because of his hearing problems he is a little hard to understand once in a while but he does great sermons. I’m really glad to be able to work with him and learn from him. God really did me a solid by blessing me with this opportunity. He and I are both “interim” while the church looks for a permanent pastor but we do make a good team and we both love what we are doing.

Today and tomorrow I must finish up my Easter sermon. And, I need to finish up the bulletin and get it sent to Karen, our secretary. Once the Easter season is done, it will really seem like life has slowed down. But until then, things are a bit rushed.

So, I’ll sign off for today and finish my coffee, watch a few birds and squirrels and give thanks for a beautiful day. Then, head to my office downsairs and get busy. Peace.