"The way we live our lives is the way we live our days." I believe I heard that from author Annie Dillard. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her work, Pilgrim at Tinkers Creek and taught English at Wesleyan University in CT for 21 years. As I have pondered that line over the years, I like to add, “And the way we live our days is the way we live our moments.”

“Unless I see the SCARS?” Over the years I have wondered about Jesus’ scars. It is one way he is known, isn’t it? It’s not the only way.

Running out of chores, I tackled my “blessing drawer.” I’m not sure where, or from whom, I got the idea but when I got a note or a letter that was affirming I tossed it in the bottom drawer of my desk. Over the years it filled up, that’s not bragging, just saying a lot of years went by, and a week ago with the quarantine at full tilt, it was time to open it. I dumped them into an empty moving box and settled in. One by One One by one I read them, often pausing to ponder or cry like when I hit one from our deceased son, AJ.

I don’t recall the dreams, I don’t think they were “nightmares,” but when I awoke I was assaulted with, well, “Daymares.” Daymares of reality.

For the past 5 years, Barbara and I have made it our gift to each other to go to a beach a few days after Christmas. So, it’s a sunny and seventy-five degree New Year’s Day 2021. We’re mostly shaded by our umbrella. Barb’s caught up in a murder mystery and I’m watching the pelicans fish. I’m also reading a book, it so happens, on fishing. It’s about fishing for folks like Jesus called his disciples to do.

Agape and Eros are two of the three key Greek words for love, (the third being Philia), and is the title of a book by Anders Nygren that used to be on my shelf in my dorm room in West Philadelphia - the city of brotherly love. My last year at seminary I dove into the passage from John 21 that many consider the greatest dialogue in scripture. That is the 7 exchanges between Peter and Jesus, vs 15-22.

Christmas shopping is when you go to a shopping center and become a moving target for hundreds of half-crazed and half-blind drivers – drivers who know no fear and would challenge a Sherman tank for a parking place. It’s where you go to cash in on all the non-bargains Madison Avenue has prepared for you to purchase. It’s tiring and draining on me, Christmas shopping.

“Why did you go into the ministry?” the rector’s wife asked me at dinner. My response surprised me. I mean, when asked in the past, I would say something like, “God was pushing me,” or “God was working behind the scenes.” In other words, I hadn’t sense a ‘call’ or that I was being led. I had been surprised to findmyself going in this direction.

By far the best eulogy I’ve heard to date, was given to a packed house at Truro Church in Fairfax, VA, by one of three sons of a priest friend of mine. He had an oft repeated line that gave focus and rhythm to his words:

As you look at what lies ahead: