The Atlantic Ocean

Timezone: UTC-2.

Church service in the morning, truly by the Anglican seafaring heritage, ministered by the captain, with readings by the officers. We sang a number of hymns, including, naturally, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”.

A lot of new acquaintances today.

  • An American couple who used to work in foreign service, including at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. It is with “Dzień dobry!” that the conversation started, unsurprisingly. I am keen to learn more about their Polish experience.
  • The promenade deck once again. I was planning for two or three rounds thereof after lunch, but I lost track until about a dozen or more – thanks to the charming company of a vocalist who sings in an Irish folk duo every night in the restaurants, and will do so all the way until Sydney. Again, music proves to be able to make people click. I will go to her concert later tonight.
  • A wonderful English lady from Yorkshire and an equally agreeable Dutch man from a coastal town, at the bar. They are cruise ship veterans but do not seem to have gotten tired of it all. I can see why. The affair of slowly making one's way through the mysterious and restless ocean captivates the soul.
  • A German couple who were very hopeful that I would turn out to be a Tridentine Mass-going Roman Catholic – I was disappointed to disappoint them about the specifics. Still, a rather pleasant conversation – one to put on the scale of the German soul that I devised yesterday.
  • A Romanian barman who claims he can guess a person's nationality and age by their faces alone. As far as the former is concerned, I don't believe him. He doesn't seem to account for civic, non-ethnic nations. How very Central Eastern European of him.

So take good care of your time. Watch how you spend it, for nothing is more precious. In the twinkling of an eye, heaven can be won or lost. Here's how we know time is precious. God, the giver of time, never gives us two moments simultaneously; instead, he gives them to us one after another. We never get the future. We only get the present moment. He does this to establish order in his creation and to keep cause and effect in place. Time is made for us; we're not made for time. God is the ruler of nature, but his gift of time has no strings attached – it never determines our own nature and natural impulses. Instead, each of these exactly corresponds to one atom of time. That way, none of us has an excuse on Judgment Day when we go before God to give an account of how we spent our time. We won't be able to say, “You gave me two moments at once to my every single impulse.”
I can hear you complaining: “What am I supposed to do then? I know you're right, but how can I give an itemized account of each moment? I'm twenty-four already. I never noticed time before. Your argument has already convinced me there's no way I can go back in time and change things. Time doesn't work that way, nor does ordinary grace. I can't go back in time and make amends. I'm also well aware that because I'm weak and slow about some things spiritually, I can no more control the time to come than I did the time past. At best, I'll manage maybe one out of a hundred impulses well. So tell me what to do. Help me now, for the love of Jesus.”
“The Cloud of Unknowing”