Generation after Generation

Generation after generation, Vice and virtue breed with one another, Until hate is easy, and love is maudlin. And hearts, like flies over muck, do hover. O that one could sever this sullied past From we whose hearts are stained and sunk by it. That which we are told to put first, comes last, In the order of crude survivalists. Love is preached and praised, but rarely practiced. Art is punished unless profitable. More valued are the words, about them, lisped. So we cannot bear to leave the bubble. In your own reflection find your own way To marry past and present with today.

#poetry #sonnet

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Thank you for reading! Sonnets are my way of coping with stress, I guess. Gives me something to think about while my daughter is playing with puzzles at the library, and keeps me from scrolling on my phone. I hope you like it. If I get more I think I will post them here sooner rather than later. What else is a blog for?

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In Summary: * Time-management is an extremely important skill to employ when setting schedules, goals, etc. We must be careful not to commit to too many chores or projects than we can realistically or comfortably handle. With this thought in mind I've declined an invitation to enter a monthly tournament run by one of my correspondence chess clubs. Lord knows I've still got plenty of other games in progress at that club and others. And now that I've begun following this season's MLB games, it's necessary that I cut back on other activites that claim my time and mental focus.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Starting Ash Wednesday, 2026, I've added this daily prayer as part of the Prayer Crusade Preceding the 2026 SSPX Episcopal Consecrations.

Health Metrics: * bw= 227.63 lbs. * bp= 140/83 (70)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 07:10 – 1 peanutbutter sandwich * 09:15 – mashed potatoes, cole slaw * 10:40 – fried chicken * 12:30 – beef chop suey, fried rice * 14:00 – 1 fresh apple * 16:30 – 1 bean & cheese breakfast taco

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 05:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 06:00 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:20 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, and nap * 12:30 to 13:30 – Watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 14:00 – follow an MLB Spring Training game, Brewers vs.Rangers * 16:50 – tuned into 1200 WOAI, the flagship station for the San Antonio Spurs, well ahead of pregame coverage then the call of tonight's game vs. the Brooklyn Nets. Go Spurs Go!

Chess: * 18:40 – moved in all pending CC games

Hoje, pela primeira vez, eu pensei seriamente em não escrever. Talvez colocar só um: “ainda aqui”, ou um: “te amo” e pronto.

Não me sinto na obrigação de escrever todos os dias, mas, ainda assim, me sinto determinado a isso.

Eu preciso pensar em você para escrever, e talvez por isso eu esteja com o pé tão atrás hoje.

Hoje eu não quero pensar muito em você. Não quero imaginar como foi seu dia, o que fez e o que vai fazer, porque isso inevitavelmente vai me levar para uma parte do seu dia que dói imaginar.

Mas, ainda assim, aqui estou eu, pensando.

Passei hoje o dia inteiro pensando no porquê de me sentir tão determinado em relação a você, no porquê de te querer tanto. E, sinceramente, não sei explicar...

Eu oro todo dia pela gente. Oro para Deus esfriar em mim esse sentimento, se não for pra ser; oro para confirmar em você, se for. E juro que, a cada dia, eu acordo com mais saudade e mais vontade de você.

Não só vontade de te ver, te abraçar, de ter você emaranhada nos meus braços, sentindo o gosto da sua boca e da sua pele.

Mas vontade de ter você totalmente infiltrada na minha vida. De abrir meu GPT e ver lá coisas suas, de abrir minha galeria e ela estar repleta de você, de abrir meu YouTube e ele recomendar seu vídeo, de ter seus filmes no meu streaming... Eu tenho vontade de dividir a vida inteira com você, de ter suas bobeiras misturadas às minhas, pois só Deus sabe o quanto você me alegra e o quanto meu coração te ama mais a cada vez que você o faz sorrir.

No fim das contas, eu te escrevo hoje porque eu realmente me sinto determinado por você. Me sinto decidido. E, uma vez que escolho passar uma vida inteira ao seu lado, estou escolhendo passar os meus melhores dias com você, mas os meus piores também.

Eu te quero, Julia Manuela. E te quero por completa. Quero o pacote todo: seu amor, seu carinho, suas bobeiras, mas também seus medos, ansiedades, traumas, chatice e indecisão.

Eu vou estar aqui, não importa o dia, não importa a fase. Eu vou estar nos momentos em que eu desejar estar, e também vou estar nos momentos em que eu desejar ir embora.

Estou decidido quanto a isso.

Pensar em você, escrever sobre você e amar você é tudo que eu sei fazer.

Eu te amo.

Do garoto que já não sabe mais

não escrever sobre você,

Nathan.

Rangers vs Brewers

Yes, Baseball! Listening now to live Major League Baseball, a Cactus League Spring Training Game between the Milwaukee Brewers and my Texas Rangers. Brewers are leading 2-0 in the 3rd Inning.

It's my understanding that ESPN and MLB.TV have entered into a major new business relationship this year. And it remains to be seen exactly how this will affect availability of live coverage of games this season, but as long as I can access MLB's GAMEDAY live stats, and live radio play-by-play broadcasts, I'll be one happy old boy.

And the adventure continues.

Shoresy Season 5, Episode 1: Keep It Simple. Hulu, 2026

Note:

I will be reviewing every episode of Season 5

If I showed you the premiere of the fifth season of Shoresy, you’d cycle through:

1.  This is the most profane thing I’ve seen on television

2.  I can’t stop laughing

3.  Am I crying?

4.  Can I watch more?

5.  Are we drinkin’ beers?

Shoresy is to prestige TV what a dirty limerick is to poetry. It’s also the empathetic but raunchy cis-hetro older brother to the hit show, Heated Rivalry. That isn’t just a good line. Jared Keso, the creator of Shoresy, and HR creator Jacob Tierney partnered on Letterkenney and Shoresy’s early seasons. 

Catch up on it.

#tv #TVReview #Hulu #Shoresy #Letterkenny #CanadianTV #Hockey #Cinemastodon #100WordReviews #Drabble #100DaysToOffload #HeatedRivalry

It begins: the day started with an emergency call to fix the staging environment for a UAT. A hammer and a scalpel were brought to fix it, and fix it we did.

Your writing is priceless and a work of art. It should be treated with the highest care and respect. However, there’s the belief that mistakes and blemishes ruin the enjoyment of writing.

When you write in wooden pencil on paper, the older pages smear and fade. And when you write on the left page of a notebook or journal, the graphite transfers to the previous left page. It makes your paper look dirty and unsophisticated.

It’s understandable. After all, would you write in charcoal, chalk, or ink pads? Of course not. So you write in pen like a respectable adult, not a kid trying to learn their ABCs. But I don’t like the pressure of no-mistakes writing and bleed through from a pen. Nothing loses my interest more.

If the pencil transfers bother me that much I can erase them or use archival spray. Not so much with pen. But why do I like graphite smears and transfers from a wooden pencil more than pen?

Not only do I love the scratches of pencil to paper, I love the way it leaves a mark when you smear the graphite with your hands. And how it transfers to the other side of the page. It’s like a shadow. It’s there but doesn’t intrude on you as much as the loops and dots from pen. You might as well be writing in your own blood.

You may think the graphite makes the paper dirty and unsophisticated, but I see a beautiful legacy. It reminds you of your pencil’s lifespan. How it starts off new and whittles down until its usefulness ends. You come back to your notebooks and can see all that hard work with the help of your pencil’s essence. Just one of the more beautiful things in this life.

#writing #graphite #pencil #smear #transfer

The ordained ministries in Christian communities tend to fall along one of three structures. There is the historic threefold office of ministry which holds that deacons, priests, and bishops are three orders of interrelated ministry. Within this system, ordination is successive, which means that to be a bishop, one must already be a priest, and to be a priest, one must already be a deacon. It was only in the latter part of the 20th century that many traditions fully recovered the permanent diaconate as a full formed and lifelong form of ministry. There were distinct one-way rituals that marked the movement from one order to another.

 

Some Mainline Protestant denominations embraced a simpler two-fold definition of ordained ministry, with one option being the Ministry of Word & Service, which is roughly equivalent to the permanent diaconate, and the other being the Ministry of Word & Sacrament, which is most analogous to the priesthood, though some of these ministers serve in institutional roles as executive presbyters/bishops/presidents. The office of adjudicatory leader is a different form of Word & Sacrament, not a distinct order of ministry. The formation track is parallel for the two groups, and one does not lead to the other. Though it might be fair to address that there is often pressure for candidates for ministry to choose Word & Sacrament because of a perceived or actual clergy shortage.

 

Finally, other Christian denominations and associations hold to a single order of ordained ministry, effectively an authorization to preach and preside within the community. The diaconate is understood to be a form of lay ministry, with deacons serving as the mission and service leaders in a congregation, while Trustees (or a similar title) handles the fiduciary and management responsibilities. Sometimes this onefold ministry is understood as further specialized using the five-fold ministries of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, which include a mix of ordained and lay roles, but all of which are meant for building up the people of God. These include apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Each of these roles is grounded primarily in a Ministry of the Word, but with different emphasis like planting/founding, radical truth telling, reaching new people outside the faith, spiritually caring for people in a congregation, and offering both initial and lifelong formation.

 

While I was ordained into the two-fold ministry structure and followed the path of the Ministry of Word and Sacrament, I have been exploring new language to articulate where I find myself at this moment in my life and spiritual journey. I find myself drawn to the idea of a ministry like one of the fivefold roles, because it can be done by a layperson or by someone ordained. My working title is Ministry of Word and Wonder. In some of my professional spaces I use the idea of a worker-priest or a chaplain because I am ordained, but I do not have a congregation in my care now. Rather, I have circles of community, like my unhoused neighbors, other social workers I serve with, the people of my home city, the siblings of the order, my colleagues at Bethany House of Prayer, and my colleagues at SDI. The Ministry of Word and Wonder includes a deep grounding in sacred story (scripture, history, the stories of each person I meet, my own unfolding experience of the divine, and the wondrous insights I have gained through life in community). It involves bringing contemplative curiosity to those stories and to the present moment, without clinging to easy explanations or anxiously desired futures.

 

The Ministry of Word and Wonder is the focus of my rule of life. When I help others construct a rule, I try to help them focus much less on “What do I do? What should I do? What do I wish I would do?”, and much more on “Who am I meant to be?” and “How do I want to be?” An embodied approach of identity, principle, and values can be applied to a nearly infinite number of practices. This working title embodies those questions for me. I am a storyteller, story-keeper, and affirming witness. I am a gentle nurturer who listens for the sacred in what is present. I am anchored in a dialectical relationship that goes from Gospel to Life, and Life to Gospel. I move towards my favorite self (seeing in me what delights God), when I am curious, open, asking open ended questions, exploring, and searching for new ways to love the world and all creatures.

 

So, yes, I write and ponder, I listen and reflect, I mirror and challenge, I mentor, I sometimes preach, I often teach, I try to tell the truth in love. I preside at the table or in other ways when invited, and I offer myself in service to my many circles of community. All held deeply in the sacredness of the Word and the joy of Wondering.

 

Practice

• What words would you use to describe your ministry in daily life?
• How do these words interact with your other senses of calling (work, relationships, family life, community life, etc.)?
• Spend some time journaling with “Who am I meant to be?” and “How do I want to be?”
• Give thanks for the many kinds of ministers and servants in your life!

Spurs vs Nets

This Thursday night we'll turn to the NBA for our basketball game before bedtime as the San Antonio Spurs travel to play against the Brooklyn Nets. With its scheduled start time of 06:30 PM CST this game fits very nicely into my evening routine.

And the adventure continues.