Tuesday in Easter Week: fish-hawks
OMG, a magnificent, clear spring morning, 57° 63%, not a cloud to see. No socks or Uggs, so my feet are cold, but sipping second mug of hot & black and nibbling a morsel of dark chocolate. It's Xmas Chocolate because, see, I ration it, I only get a square and you don't get any - makes it last twice as long.
Others have, I've not caught him arriving with a fish for her, but the male osprey seems to have brought a piece of black cloth or something, that she keeps tearing at. As far as I can tell this morning, they still have just the one egg, both of them attentive to warming it. Always ducks in the background, sometimes geese, and with the audio on the wildlife noise is excellent!
The other osprey cam I watch intermittently is about, as I recall, a hundred miles or so away, to the west and far side of the mountain range, above someone's home, overlooking a large lake. No eggs in that nest yet as of yesterday and this morning. Maybe he doesn't know why she's got her back turned toward him?
An osprey nest down around Gainesville has two hatchlings so far of their three eggs, but I'm not watching them, I already have my pet birds. And then, of course, our own ospreys here at 7H, to watch circling, hovering, diving and sometimes sailing away with a catch and a shrill chirp, but I can't see their nest, which I think is either in the trees on the other side of the condo, or maybe atop one of the tall towers.
What am I doing? Well, sitting here typing, obviously, looking out across StAndrews Bay at the mid-rise buildings at Bay Point and the tall Gulf-front condos along Thomas Drive. Seagulls passing, and a ship earlier this morning, but no water traffic at the moment,
nothing between me and The Pass but the burned out wreck.
Thoughts this morning. A favorite hymn that I've known and sung to at least three different tunes over the years, William Alexander Percy's poem "His Peace" that unfortunately leaves out the first and best stanza, which so perfectly sets the scene:
They Cast Their Nets in Galilee
The poem His Peace appeared in the 1924 book Enzio's Kingdom and Other Poems by William Alexander Percy.
The last four verses of the poem became the hymn They Cast Their Nets in Galilee, and entered the Hymnal 1940 with the tune Georgetown, composed by David McK. Williams in 1941. The tune received its name out of friendship for F. Bland Tucker, who was then rector of St. John's Church, Georgetown Parish, D.C.
His Peace
I love to think of them at dawn
Beneath the frail pink sky,
Casting their nets in Galilee
And fish-hawks circling by.
Casting their nets in Galilee
Just off the hills of brown
Such happy, simple fisherfolk
Before the Lord came down.
Contented, peaceful fishermen,
Before they ever knew
The peace of God that filled their hearts
Brimful and broke them too.
Young John who trimmed the flapping sail
Homeless in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
Head down was crucified.
The peace of God, it is no peace,
But strife closed in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing --
The marvelous peace of God!
and of course delights me, because I can join the scene a cool spring morning in Galilee, standing and watching there up the hill from the sea, where Jesus is watching the ospreys too.
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Tuesday in Easter Week
O God, who by the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light: Grant that we, who have been raised with him, may abide in his presence and rejoice in the hope of eternal glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be dominion and praise for ever and ever. Amen.
Okay, it's a lovely prayer, for me overlaid with personal questions and doubts because, counter to Paul, my faith is for this life, again, a religion to live by not a religion to die by.
Marion Hatchett points out that it's not just our collect for Tuesday in Easter Week, it's also one of the prayers in the Burial Office.
RSF&PTL
T