pace

Ship anchored offshore in the Gulf, looks to be a large one. Numerous boats speeding out for another Saturday of weekend red snapper season. Earlier a dredge barge headed out to sea, must have a job at a channel nearby or maybe going over to replenish someone’s beach. 70.9F 61% looks to be a near perfect day and there goes the 7:00 whistle at the paper-mill off to our east. Bay is flat. Another Saturday with the yellow boat testing Mercury motors zipping by, east to west, now west to east and back toward its dock in Millville. Single engine plane buzzing overhead. Bright green kayak paddling by with a person in orange life vest. pace 

Hurricane season 2016 opens in a couple weeks. Shhhh, knock-wood, and wishing you long years.

Here’s tomorrow’s collect for the day. Actually there are two, we have a choice, here’s the first:

Almighty God, who on this day didst open the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of thy Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Hatchett (Commentary on the American Prayer Book, Seabury, NY, p184) says the first one is new to the 1979 BCP, the second dates to the Gregorian sacramentary, maybe 6th century, and was our collect for Pentecost in all earlier Prayer Books: 

GOD, whiche as upon this daye haste taughte the heartes of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the lyght of thy holy spirite; graunte us by the same spirite to have a right judgement in al thinges, and evermore to rejoyce in hys holy coumforte; through the merites of Christ Jesus our saviour; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unitie of the same spirite, one God, worlde without ende. 

The new one intrigues me with its phrase, “didst open the way of eternal life” in that with my usual lack of certainty I’m not sure what is envisioned by eternal life. In my telescope days I’ve seen too far out into the universe, and too many images of bonobo and hominidae before homosapiens for certitude about anything. And so did Creator raise us up with, as Schleiermacher says, "a sense of the Infinite" to know and praise Him, or did Eve's bite of apple release in us the self-awareness and fear of death that differentiates us from cuz Bonobo? Basically, I’m good with the Christian imperative love thy neighbor as thyself for now, requiescat in pace for whatever comes next, neither anxious nor eager for streets of gold, and content to return to the dust! 

DThos+