Working at NASA, my office frequently had people stop by to interest us in “new technologies” they wished us to “invest in” via our grant programs. One of my many jobs was to review these applications in our specific areas of Advanced Life Support. These applications were fairly easy to weed out before too much time was wasted on their reviews. The very first test was a review of the Executive Summary to check for grammar and non-scientific language. I had a personal feel for “acceptable and non-acceptable” technical language, and if that started out inadequate, the rest of the…
ANNUAL OBLATIONS ARE DUE 15 FEBRUARY Please pay your Annual Oblations by the Deadline – 15 February. https://SMOTJ.org After you log in, just click on the big red banner that states: PAY YOUR OBLATION NOW. ($175 TO SMOTJ – $25 To Our Priory.) _________________________________________________________________________ I awoke on Sunday, 13 May 1973, in a 12-story men’s dormitory on the campus of Oklahoma State University, the only person in the building. As the brilliant morning light shone through my window, I had awakened as a newly minted graduate of that staid institution, not fully awake, but fully prepared to take on…
The final category under the Federal Employee Job Description was the infamous “Duties as Assigned.” After my 42 years of service in state and federal employment, one of these assignments stands out as being among the most memorable – getting naked at work. As it turns out, according to Holy Scripture, this was about as genuinely “religious” as I could get while on any federal duty. More on that later… My job as a NASA bioengineer (Space Life Sciences Engineer) was to design advanced life support systems for Lunar and Mars bases and crews. The system we were designing was…
As I am sure all of you know very well, one of the most useful of life’s little dictums is, “Learn from the mistakes of others.” In our own lifetimes, we have been able to personally witness the foibles of our tiny slice of human history as it unspools in living color in an insane 24-hour repeating cycle. So, with all that saturation, you would think we would actually learn from the mistakes of others, like no other generation before us, and thus become perfected masters of our own behavior. The guy staring back at me from my mirror this…
In 2022, the Priory of The Temple Church was preparing to host the 2023 Grand Convent and Investiture and decided to formally ask permission to hold our ecclesiastical Convent services at the breathtaking Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe, in Orlando. Our delegation to accomplish this included me, Chvse. Claudia Chamberland, then Prior and Grand C&I Committee Chair, Her Excellency Chvse. Linda Ross, as well as three very devout and involved Roman Catholics: His Excellency Past Prior Robert S. Miller, Chvse. Margaret “Margo” Miller, and the (then newly knighted) late Chev. Robert “Bob” Sherman, whose…
Yesterday I gave a presentation to the U.S. assembly of a joint project of the International Atomic Energy Agency (ISOE). In one part of it I used the slide you see at the top of this piece titled the “U.S. Department of Angst”. In the presentation I detailed the long worry list the U.S. government was dealing with concerning the occupation of the southern polar region of our Moon. That any government is a “necessary evil” has been frequently lamented by many. Is every government evil? Not all of it. But some of it is unavoidably so. Yet, is any…
According to the historic record, our Templar forefathers of antiquity were not perfect on the battlefield. Indeed, they were not even close to being invincible before their enemies. The historical accounts, although truthfully very incomplete, suggest that they won about 30-40% of their engagements struggling with the screaming infidels on the field of honor. That win-loss number reminds me of my Oklahoma State Alma Mater’s win-loss rate on the gridiron over the past 60 years. So, unfortunately, I have become very used to that statistic… Stepping back, that win-loss rate begs a very obvious question. If the Templar Knights were…
For some reason, the people of our culture have decided that making a resolution on the first day of each new year somehow signifies something more than making a resolution on any other given day. It is lent a mythical power that transcends “less important” promises made to self on the other 364 rotational cycles of our planet. Forbes Health has conducted several surveys on this issue and discovered that every New Year’s resolution has a lifespan of around 3.4 months (on average) before they disappear into the vast landfill of long forgotten promises to self. I totally get it….
Claudia and I wish to extend to you and your family our most heartfelt Christmas greetings with all our love. On this Holy Day of Christ-mass, we pray that you will find the peace that only our Savior can give – who came to us as an innocent babe, wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in a manger. But our Jesus also left this world in the same fashion – innocent, humble and with all our sins laid upon his pierced and broken form. He said “it is finished” at the end, departing this world with our transgressions in…
Remember The Holiday Party! Saturday, 3 January 2026 – at 1:00 – 4:00 PM Dixie Crossroads – Titusville, Florida RSVP by 27 December to Registrar@TempleChurchPriory.org ___________________________________________________________________ As modern Templars and Christians, the Season of Advent and Christmas takes on an acute significance. We cannot consider the profound implications of Christmas without likewise considering the events of two millennia ago in the tiny village of Bethlehem, just 30 miles due south of the gates of Jerusalem. And we likewise cannot forget that the Season of Advent is actually all about the Season of the Resurrection, which took place just outside Jerusalem’s…