In later years, when I try to remember why I wasn't blogging quite as regularly in the summer of 2025, let me remember several things: I had to be at the hospital, ready for morning huddle, at 8 a.m. each week day. There were mornings I just ran out of time. I was doing more writing in my offline journal. There were more parts of my life that needed to be offline.
Let me capture a few bits this morning:
--Last week seemed one of those weeks of significant deaths: Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Ozzy Ozbourne, Chuck Mangione, Hulk Hogan, and Tom Lehrer. I'm not sure that I would have written a whole blog post about any one of them, even if I had more blogging time, but each one seemed significant as I heard it on the news on the way to and from work.
--This week I have been thinking about pneumonia. Happily not my own case. I always think of pneumonia as the disease that happens as something minor, like a cold, worsens. Is that always the case? Can pneumonia develop quickly?
--I am thinking back to high school when a student would get "walking pneumonia" and have to be on bed rest. I remember being envious of being ordered home to rest.
--I have been paying attention to the Churchwide Assembly happening in Phoenix this week, with the election of presiding bishop, which is a bishop for the national church. I think of myself as having several bishops. I am a candidate for ordination through the Florida-Bahamas synod, I live in the North Carolina synod, and the church where I am a Synod Appointed Minister is in the Southeastern Synod. Kevin Strickland, bishop of the Southeastern Synod, has made it through 2 rounds of elections for bishop. Today, the top seven (which includes Bishop Strickland) make speeches and go through more voting. I have known Bishop Strickland since the days when he was a pastor: we are Create-in-Me retreat friends, and we went to the same undergraduate school, Newberry College, although we weren't there at the same time.
--Churchwide Assembly has been talking about the Nicene Creed and about the "filioque" which is a term obscure to non-church history folks. I love church history and can scarcely understand why we're still talking about this. But I do understand that it matters in terms of repairing schism.
--In a week of Churchwide Assembly considering the "filioque" and voting for bishop of the ELCA means there's lots of discussion of the Holy Spirit. I have been thinking of a poem or perhaps a work of theology that talks about the Holy Spirit as the one who wreaks havoc--it might be good havoc, but it's the kind of thing that can leave ruins in its wake, Holy Spirit as disruptor. We often think we would like that, but we often fail to consider how changed the landscape would be.
--In terms of the Holy Trinity, I've often thought of the Son/Redeemer in the role of disruptor, the one who goes his own way, the one the angels shake their heads over.
--Another theological idea I want to capture: last week I talked about seeing the world through God-shaped glasses, which is a way of talking about training ourselves to see the world as God does, to be drenched in love for the world, the way that God is.
--As I've been moving through the summer, I've been noticing interesting tattoos. One man had bear paw prints (or was it a big cat of some sort?) across the back of one calf. Another man has a very realistic depiction of a tomato plant on his upper arm. I saw a woman with all sorts of anemone shells on her forearm. Is there a poem in all these images?
--I have never gotten a tattoo for many reasons, mainly because of pain avoidance. But also, I can't think of an image that I want to have on my body forever.
--I am thinking of my sketches, how a random collection of lines drawn one day can become trees or women dancing or mountains or test tubes bubbling the next day. I'm wondering if that idea could become something for the classroom. One collection of lines, drawn by me, and everyone gets the same sheet. What do they create? And how can we write about it?
Well, my morning writing time comes to an end, the way it always does. Let me go for my walk. A month ago, when I left the house at 6 a.m., it was already light enough to see. Now it is not. The season is shifting, for those awake to see.
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