Month: March 2024

Posted in Holiday Joy

Joyful Easter!

Posted on by Neal Saye

What a wonderful Easter service at our Asbury Memorial Church this morning here in Savannah.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

One: We believe in God:

All: who is older than eternity,and younger than our next breath; who is beyond describing, yet knows us all by name; who inspires faith,yet cannot be contained by religion.

One: We believe in Jesus Christ, flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone:

All: He came in the body to give worth to every human life. He touched the untouchable, loved the unlovable, forgave the unforgivable, and endured slander, persecution, and death in order that through suffering love God’s kingdom might come on earth. He rose from the grave as living proof that what is laid down in faith will be raised in glory

One: We believe in the Holy Spirit:

All: who leads us into truth and freedom, who gives good gifts to all God’s children, who inspires research, enables prayer, and wills that human economics and politics should prioritize justice, care of the earth, and the healing of nations.

One: We celebrate the potential of the Church:

All: the life in our bodies, the yearning in our souls, the promise of good things in store, and the opportunity to love and serve one another.

Amen.

Water, River, Spirit, Grace,

Sweep over me, Sweep over me!

Recarve the depths your fingers traced

In sculpting me, in sculpting me.

PlymouthChurch DSM

HR and I hope that you are having a peaceful Easter 2024.

In front of our church’s Living Cross this stunningly beautiful Easter morning.

Posted in Art Joy

A Fresh and Just Look at Stained Glass … “Saint Kern“

Posted on by Neal Saye

Today Robert and I visited the Walter Museum of Art in Baltimore. Our favorite exhibit was one called “Saint Amelie.”

SAINT AMELIE

Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), 2014

Saint Amelie is one of a series of twelve freestanding stained glass panels by Kehinde Wiley that depict contemporary portraits of young Black residents of Brooklyn, New York. It mirrors the form, composition, figural pose, and framing of historic stained glass windows from the medieval and Renaissance periods, and specifically a window titled Saint Amelie by the French Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867).

Wiley honors his subject, Kern Alexander, whom he used as a model in multiple works, by depicting him in a context traditionally reserved for Christian saints and religious contemplation.

Like much in Wiley’s work, Saint Amelie explores the invisibility of Black people within the traditional art historical canon.

Hand-painted stained glass, mounted on lightbox with aluminum frame.

A beautiful exhibit!

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 3/29/24. “Baltimore Edition”

Posted on by Neal Saye

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

For quite a while, Robert and I have been planning a trip up to Baltimore to visit a handful of his aging aunts and other relatives in the city and surrounding area.

Our early morning flight from Savannah landed in the Baltimore/Washington International Airport about 9 am this past Tuesday. What a shock it was to us when we turned our phones back on to see the horrorific news about the disaster of the Francis Scott Key Bridge about 15 miles away. And as we found out later, six workers were missing and presumed dead.

1. Ironically enough, first on our agenda before we checked into our Airbnb later in the day was to visit the gravesites of Robert’s mother in Maryland National Memorial Park …

And his father and stepmom in Arbutus Cemetery …

2. We LOVED going back to our favorite Baltimore crab cake restaurant, G and M.

3. Reveling in the ravishing Baltimore daffodils.

Here’s a fascinating little independent film I produced, wrote and directed titled “Daffodil Hunching.” (Watch carefully for my guest star.)

(HR didn’t know he was in the film.)

4. Seeing the beauty and truth of this Ukrainian Catholic Church across from Patterson Park in Baltimore.

5. Finding the coolest Free Little Library.

And three books!

I hope you’ve had a Good Good Friday and will enjoy a Great Easter Weekend ahead.

Posted in My Saturday Evening Post

My Saturday Evening Post: 3/23/24 “Does Food?”

Posted on by Neal Saye

Does food (or life) get any better than this?!

So last weekend, Robert and I ventured down to Jacksonville, Florida to get away from the St. Patrick’s Day craziness here in Savannah. (We live on the parade route.)

One of our weekend meals found us in the Mayport area of Jacksonville, just off the Atlantic Ocean. and at one of our very favorite seafood restaurants, Safe Harbor.

I got the blackened shrimp and haddock. Oh my goodness!

Robert got something or other, I can’t remember what, I was too busy with my own seafood extravaganza.

But here he is …

The Joy of Food!

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 3/22/24

Posted on by Neal Saye

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

1. Touching a tree.

But not just any tree. a magnificent Longleaf Pine here in Savannah.

2. Last Friday on our way to Jacksonville, Florida for the weekend, stopping by Amelia Island for lunch at one of our favorite casual lunch haunts along the ocean, Coast at the Ritz Carlton. (We eat there, not stay there.)

My Catch of the Day Sandwich was simply incredible.

3. Grandson Gabriel’s sensational three seconds in a recent basketball game in Atlanta …

I’m afraid he doesn’t get that skill from me. ☹️

4. While we were in Jacksonville last weekend (to get away from Savannah‘s crazy St. Patrick’s Day shenanigans, if you want to know … we live on the parade route), we ventured over to Jacksonville Beach where my family vacationed for well over a decade back in the late 60s and 70s.

We visited the Beaches Museum there. And from their archives, I discovered the motel where my family stayed … the Silver Sea Motel! A mid- to lower-end motel with beds where you could insert a quarter and get a shaky fifteen-minute “massage.”

Such JOYFUL memories.

5. Our three little Travel Buddies who venture with us on all our trips.

We have given each other a variety of neat little stuffed animals over the years (i.e. gay), but these three have become our favorite. They go where we go. This photo was taken in the living room of our Jacksonville Airbnb. We loved the pink azaleas waving at us through the windows.

May this weekend you enJOY some JOYful memories as well.

Posted in Holiday Joy, Peace

Taize Four: “Living Water”

Posted on by Neal Saye

Tonight was the fourth and final Taize service at our church, Asbury Memorial, in Savannah. Next on the Christian liturgical calendar is this weekend’s Palm Sunday.

(Here’s a link to my first post about Taize, with a bit of explanation about what it’s all about: https://nealenjoy.com/2024/02/28/taize/)

Tonight’s final service was again splendidly simple and peace filled.

The emphasis was upon Living Water.

From the order of service:

“After Pope John Paul Il visited the ecumenical, monastic Taizé community in France in 1986, he said:

One passes through Taizé as one passes close to a spring of water. The traveler stops, quenches his thirst, and continues on his way. The brothers of the community do not want to keep you.

They want, in prayer and silence, to enable you to drink the living water promised by Christ, to know his joy, to discern his presence, to respond to his call, then to set out again to witness to his love and to serve your brothers and sisters in your parishes, your schools, your universities, and in all your places of work.

So come into this place of peace & let its silence heal your spirit;

Come into this place of memory & let its history warm your soul;

Come into this place of prophecy & power & let its vision change your heart.”

CHANT: Let all who are thirsty come. Let all who wish receive the water of life freely. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

May the peace that passeth understanding, the peace of God, which the world can neither give nor take away, be among us, and abide in our hearts. Amen.

Posted in Monday Moaning or Monday Marveling?

Monday Moaning or Monday Marveling? 3/18/24 “All”

Posted on by Neal Saye

Marveling this morn, thinking back on the church Robert and I walked past on a walk near our Airbnb in the Riverside neighborhood of Jacksonville over the weekend.

It’s Romanesque and Byzantine architecture first caught our eyes. But then the large sign out front sparkled in joyfully inclusive welcome.

Look closer …

Thank you, Riverside. You are a Marvel.