CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN: EASTER SUNDAY MUSINGS

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN: EASTER SUNDAY MUSINGS

Jesus Christ is risen today. A – a – a – a – a – lay- ay –loo -oo –yah. Every Easter no matter where I am or what I’m doing, this hymn streams through my unconsciousness without fail. And usually I bring it to my conscious self, singing it at the top of my lungs, or at a whisper, depending on my surroundings. Today, it’s a whisper here inside Slow Motion, tied up at the Aquamarina Dock in Daytona Beach, just next to a Chart House Restaurant full of Easter eaters. I used to play this hymn for Sunday School at Edgeboro Moravian Church on Easter Sunday, this hymn and every other one in the songbook that related to the resurrection. Miss Wilson, my high school German teacher for three years, would lead us all with her healthy, but thin, soprano. That was after I zipped up the unzipped part of her dress – she lived alone, except for Fritzy the Dog (another long story). We arrived before the congregation, and I always checked the back of her dress – no need to embarrass her in front of a hundred stout Moravians, who were there for religious worship, not to giggle and point at the lady leading us in song and scriptures. I always say the Moravian Church was a good place to go when I was growing up, because it was all about the New Testament and peace, love and forgiveness – none of that Old Testament revenge stuff. We had Love Feasts on a regular basis, and at every communion we turned to our neighbors in front, back and to the sides and greeted them warmly and shook hands. Before communion we were supposed to forgive anyone who had wronged us in any way – or not take communion. I remember one congregant who got up and left church right before the start of the communion ritual, and I thought immediately that she had realized that she could not forgive everyone, so she had to forego communion, until her ability to forgive came back. She probably just had to go to the bathroom or turn off the roast in the oven. Nevertheless, forgiveness was the cornerstone of our beliefs – you were not required to forget the bad things that people did; after all, you had to learn from those experiences how better to protect yourself – but you were definitely expected to forgive the sinner, transgressor, evildoer or bungling idiot who wronged you.

Now as we are less than 24 hours away from the 2014 Boston Marathon, I have read about the attitudes of survivors of the bomb explosions and their families to the Tsarnaev brothers’ acts of evil. Understandably, some of the survivors’ relatives want the remaining brother to be convicted and put to death. That’s Old Testament justice, and there’s a lot to be said for it. When you break your pact of civility with your community by murdering one or more members of it, you have forfeited your right to live, in my opinion. Even if you should beg for forgiveness, and even if your murder victims’ surviving family offer you forgiveness, that doesn’t address the severity of the breach. And so, forgiveness, yes, but not in place of punishment. Oftentimes, crime victims or their relatives say they are trying really hard to forgive the criminal who wronged them – it’s not worth it. If you can’t forgive, move on. Don’t feel badly about not forgiving them. It doesn’t make you a lesser person. Maybe you don’t take communion, but there are worse things in life. If you can still love, then love the ones who remain, the ones who have not harmed you, and express that love in good works. That’s New Testament. Leave forgiveness to God – that’s Her job, whether She likes it or not. Live the best life that you can live, free of evil, full of love. The rest will take care of itself.

End of Easter Sunday sermon. Can I have an “Amen”?

Back to boating: Today it was murky dismal (to quote the Admiral) almost all day. The wind churned up the Indian River, turned Mosquito Lagoon around like it was in a blender and brought water crashing against the bow of Slow Motion most of the 7 and ½ hours we were on the intracoastal waterway. While Mother Nature was expelling all the air she had in her lungs, she was also entertaining us with diving porpoises, meandering manatees, and whole islands full of pelicans and egrets performing the rites of spring. Oh yes, She threw in some awesome ospreys and their young in nests high atop the highest house along the waterway or resting precariously on top of one of the waterway’s day markers. We saw no alligators, only a sign warning of their presence at the park in Titusville. We left just as dawn was cracking open over the Titusville Municipal Marina at 6:45 a.m. and the skies were charcoal gray down to the horizon. When we pulled into the Aquamarina dock at 2:15 p.m., the sun came out of nowhere and the high rise condominiums along the channel suddenly blocked the fierce wind that had been tormenting us all day. It felt like Florida weather again. I even took off two of my four layers of clothing in celebration. Yes, we’re spoiled. When the temperature is 64 degrees and we run for our long pants, socks, hats, hoodies and storm jackets, we know we have been in Key Largo too long. I alone was wearing the four layers, not the Admiral, who toughed it out with a shirt and a sweatshirt. Did I mention that I was wearing gloves too? I know there’s not a dry eye in the head of anyone reading this paragraph – from laughing, not crying.

Slow Motion has so many parts that can act up. Today, as just about every day, the depth finder was on again, off again. When we get into really, really shallow water, just as we are about to run aground, the depth finder goes berserk, printing the depth number five times larger than usual and sending an ALERT – DON’T RUN AGROUND – or the equivalent. But just before then, and most of the rest of the time we are cruising, the depth finder blinks on and off with fairly random numbers which are totally useless for guidance as to the depth of the waters we are plying. We have to get the depth finder fixed, we keep saying. When it works, it’s a thing of beauty, knowing how deep the water is beneath Slow Motion. What a treat! On our list of things to fix on Slow Motion, the depth finder has to be close to number one. However, today a new number one may have reared its head – the automatic pilot. This is the best device on the entire boat. This allows me to “steer” Slow Motion by just tapping an arrow in one direction or the other. No cranking of the steering wheel at all. No wide zigs and zags down the waterway, about which the Admiral always complains – rightly so – when I’m at the helm and not using the auto pilot. Well, today, the auto pilot was acting like me. It would start veering on one direction off the “magenta line”, then make a huge correction to jerk the bow toward the other direction. I know this pattern well, having done it too many times myself. So has Auto Pilot been following my movements too closely, or is there something mechanically wrong with it that needs fixing? There is, of course, the theory of the manic manatees, which not only chewed all the algae off the boat bottom, but also somehow screwed up Auto Pilot during their feeding frenzies. Whatever is the cause of this aberrant behavior of Auto Pilot, it is such a vital part of our daily boat operation that I have to push the depth finder issue aside and put Auto Pilot number one on the list of repairs.

The Admiral made shrimp stir fry last night. Tonight he added General Tso’s chicken to the mix, and the stir fry was even better. Yes, I admit it, I’m spoiled by the Admiral’s cooking. The night before last I prepared my own gourmet meal – grilled cheese and ham sandwich, with two kinds of cheese. See what I mean? Spoiled by the Admiral. The bell peppers – red and green – that we have been getting are so flavorful. Add the broccoli, carrots and celery. Cook it all with hoisin sauce and some other Asian sauces that the Admiral has accumulated through the years, and you have a very tasty, nutritious concoction to ladle over rice. Uncharacteristically, you are not hungry one hour after this entrée. And the side benefit is how healthy you feel – and righteous – for eating something that has no cholesterol, very little fat and lots of vitamins. The Admiral warned me about the cadmium in my rice, but I can only process so much bad news about food at one sitting. I love rice, but of course, now I have to research the danger of cadmium infiltrating these delicious little grains. And what does cadmium, in excess, do to a human being’s body? Life used to be simpler before everything became polluted.

Tomorrow we head to the oldest city in the United States, St. Augustine. It will always be wedded in my memory with Tropical Storm Debby and the sinking of the trawler two slips away from us at the Municipal Marina in June, 2012. That first visit it rained almost nonstop. I remember walking in water on the cobblestones that was above my ankles. Rain is not likely during this visit; we plan to stay just one night at River’s Edge Marina, a funky little place up the river where you can get a diesel fuel truck to come to the dock to re-fuel. And the price is lower than any other place in Florida at this point. Somehow the price of diesel fuel is always lowest at the Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake, Virginia. But we can’t wait that long to take on fuel. So we’ll settle for the best that Florida has to offer tomorrow. So there you have it, from my thoughts on the death penalty to the price of diesel fuel – these are my musings on Easter Sunday, 2014.