Friday the Fifteenth: early and Dark

Rising early never gets old. Perhaps especially at this age when Time is Dear and Life is Short. Today, Friday morning, for instance, up to sacrifice to Father Nature at one-something, eagerly back to bed, only to see a brilliant flash of light over the window from the direction of the sea. Oh, Joy! Up, coffee percolating, out on 7H porch with a cuppa hot black to participate in an electrical display far out in the Gulf, scores of miles wide, from the direction of Destin all the way to the direction of Port St Joe.

And sound from below: shouts and laughter of young people wading in the shoreline, a couple of groups of them with a light. They're still out there, but the lightning has moved on beyond my sight and it's just dark.

So, what then? Am I, are we, alone? Alone here? Are we here alone? Evidently not, and we are not so significant after all.

Nothing is Certain except that nothing we knew was correct, the galaxy pictured in the little square is as far distant and nearly as old as the Universe,

itself Other than we imagine, and our God is too small. In one of Pantokrator's universes created from a speck and a notion yehHI, here as a human once, One of us perhaps - - a speck on a speck, a flash of gold in a pan? Doctrine, dogma, creeds that stretch to explain fall nonsensically shy of Whoever or Whatever once told Moses "eh-YEH" I AM. y'VAH, BE, Being Itself. The more we observe about Time and Space and our transient place in it, enough resolves to make it clearer that we've known hardly anything all along. Only the psalmists get it, and they only in part - -

LORD, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, thou art God from everlasting, and the world without end.

Thou turnest man to destruction; again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

As soon as thou scatterest them they are even as asleep, and fade away suddenly like the grass.

In the morning it is green, and groweth up; but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.

For we consume away in thy displeasure, and are afraid at thy wrathful indignation.

Thou hast set our misdeeds before thee, and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

For when thou are angry all our days are gone; we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told.

The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their strength then but labor and sorrow, so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

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Whoever wrote Psalm 90, gazing into the night sky and seeing something, but not everything. We are not so significant that our sins stir the anger of Whoever or Whatever stirred all this. But, having been there and returned for a while, I know that the psalmist has it right when he says, "so soon passeth it away, and we are gone." Gone where? Just Gone. Simply Not.

Why are we here then? We are here to help each other while we are here.

It's okay. It's all good.

RSF&PTL