Wednesday in Easter Week

Electricity went off just as I turned on the air fryer mode of the toaster oven to experiment air-frying some Gorton’s frozen crispy fish filets bought at Publix last week on twofer. I like them.

“We have no power” flashes across the Harbour Village Forum website on the cell phone. This is why safety commends having a landline telephone even if it's seldom or never used: the cell-phones keep going for a while, but in due course they yield to the electric charger. Looking out my office/study/den window, I see that all the traffic lights along Beck Avenue have shifted to flashing, so it’s the entire local area.

Then a text: “FPL Power is out at 3001 W 10th St. There are 1558 customers affected. We expect power back on at 8:45 AM CST”. A minor inconvenience. To see “a problem” watch live what’s being done to Ukraine. Or whoever’s in the path of the wildfire in Arizona. Or wait until June and start watching The Weather Channel. Or, hell, just stay alive and keep your eyes open.

52°F when I woke up this morning, 58° now and humidity 57%. High today projected to be 78°. What’s on? I hope you’re enjoying developing and pursuing your career, but the best part of life is not having to get up and not going to nobody’s office no time never, which I pray you live long and healthy to experience for yourself.

However, I want to give you a “best moment of life” memory of my working life. Winter 1959 when it's freezing cold back home in Norfolk, going topside on the destroyer and breathing the warm, humid air of Guantanamo Bay.

Better and decades later, on a cool spring morning just like this one, walking out the front door of the Rectory in Apalachicola and down the sidewalk beside Trinity Church to Gorrie Square to smell the faintly fragrant pink azaleas and bless Whoever or Whatever Raised Jesus from the Dead for life and love.

I’ll give you another. No I weon’t, never mind.

Here’s today’s collect instead:

Wednesday in Easter Week

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of the bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold hm in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Goes with the story at Luke 24:13f, doesn’t it, a post-Resurrection appearance on Easter afternoon, Jesus encountering two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Luke deliberately makes it a Eucharistic event, having Jesus Take, Bless, Break and Give the bread. Not sacrificial, there’s no wine/blood, but still, the four eucharistic actions, a celebration. All three synoptic evangelists do that with feeding accounts, Gospel John never does.

But my daily Easter Week exercise with the Collect for the Day, “that we may behold him in all his redeeming work,” what is "his redeeming work"? Can it be objective, or is it purely faith-based? In his hometown he could do no works of power (dynamis) because they had no faith in him, they "knew him when", so he was just a hometown boy. Gospel John is different, Jesus does signs (semeia) to show who He is and evoke faith; but in the synoptics, faith comes first and the works of power, miracles, affirm faith. So redeeming work: Faith healing? Salvation: forgiveness of sins to ransom souls into everlasting life? Everlasting life is a hope in many religions; is it, for Christians, a latter-day rationalization of Paul’s imminent End of Days, Second Coming, and establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth? IDK, but I'm of the age to wonder.

Me, I’m still working on the redeeming work, but more and more I believe I’ve got it worked out to be Opening our eyes to perceive and try to keep the promises of our Baptismal Covenant. Will you, will you, will you, will you, will you? Not because of any promise of more life after this life, but because the "Will you?s" specify how I’m called (and covenantally promise) to live the loving blessing that’s Life Itself.

Anyway, RSF&PTL

KARLINO, 591x95, underway with wood pellets for Immingham. Now I see the red pilot boat returning from the outgoing ship.

“Immingham is one of a number of UK ports that receives shipments of wood pellets which are used to generate renewable electricity at Drax Power Station in Yorkshire. With 20,000 tonnes of wood pellets arriving at Drax every day, … the port of Immingham keeps more biomass coming in than any other in the world:

https://www.drax.com/sustainable-bioenergy/5-incredible-numbers-worlds-largest-biomass-port/