Grace and forgiveness break the frozen imprisonment of guilt and death, the dead albatross falls into the sea, there is a roaring wind (the wind of the Spirit in creation and in new creation at a Pentecost) and the ship moves on. And so the mariner, who tells this story of redemption, is brought to the point of prayer as the universal language of love and grace.
He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
The tension of explanation between “it is” and “I am” continues to challenge us in our own world, and in our own lives. The old billiard ball model of atoms has given way to seemingly solid matter being in reality patterns of energy, and yet for all the sophistication of analysis the language of “I am” cannot be reduced to the language of “it is”.