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 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.
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.
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.
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.
NealEnJoy 