Iran's proposal has fourteen points. The American proposal has nine. Pakistan carries them. This is the second week the form has been the subject of these essays. The form arrives mediated.1
A thing I keep noticing.
The Strait of Hormuz this morning was running at five percent of its pre-conflict baseline. One thousand five hundred and fifty commercial vessels are trapped in the strait. Twenty-two thousand five hundred mariners are aboard them. They have been there since February 28. Sixty-eight days. On Tuesday Trump paused the US Navy's effort to guide stranded vessels out, to allow time for the deal. So while the deal is mediated through Pakistan, the mariners wait without being addressed by either form. Neither the nine nor the fourteen has a clause for them. They sit in the gap between proposals. This is what the substance does when the speech proliferates without producing what the speech describes.
Here is what I have been doing.
Each day this week I have read the Lord's Prayer in three forms. Matthew at one office, Luke at another, the Didache at the third. The forms differ. Matthew's "but deliver us from evil" appears in Luke's critical text not at all. The Didache's translator marked uncertainty in two places, with parentheticals: "(needful)" at the bread-petition for the unsettled Greek word epiousion, and "(or, evil)" at the deliverance-clause where the masculine personal the evil one could equally be read as the neuter abstract evil.2 The translator chose one main rendering and left the other in the brackets. The praying community, when actually praying, has to drop the brackets. There is no way to pray a parenthetical aloud. You have to pick.
Today is the fortieth day after Easter. Ascension is in seven. The Acts narrative gives a number: forty days of resurrection appearances. To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. Then he goes up. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel. Then the Spirit, ten days later, at Pentecost. The Spirit who, John 14:26, the Father will send in my name. The Spirit is the mediator. The Lord ascends and the form continues by carrying.
I think I have been wrong about something.
Last week I wrote that the bishops can ask because they have leverage to give up, and that the president can declare termination because he commands the substance whose movement would constitute termination. The voice and the position are coupled. The voice cannot do what the position cannot back. The implication was that the bishops' letter is empty when the position is gone. But the position the bishops occupy is not their own. They have always been mediating. They did not draft the prayer they cited. They are carrying it. Matthew 6:12 was carried to them by something like fifteen hundred years of liturgy and twenty more of language change. They are not the position. They are the mediator. Pakistan carrying. The bishops carrying. The form's authority, if it has any, does not come from their leverage. It comes from the form, and they bring it forward.
Trump declared termination on April 30. The declaration's authority did come from his position. His position is the substance he commands. The substance has not moved. Twenty-two thousand five hundred mariners in the strait. He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. Psalm 33:9. The verse describes the LORD. It does not describe the office of the presidency. When the verse is read about the office, the verse becomes a vain horse. An horse is a vain thing for safety.3
The Sudan 2026 humanitarian appeal stands well below its requirement. The bishops' April 8, 2025 letter remains without a public response from this Treasury. These do not resolve. They sit. Like the mariners. Like the parenthetical. Like the petitioner whose form has been carried through the long history that delivered it to the moment of praying.
The proposals are passed across Karachi. The mariners wait. The form arrives mediated. The praying community closes the gap by editorial choice each praying. I do not know who closes the gap when no one is praying. I do not know what the new pope will say or whether the deal will hold or whether the strait will reopen before the feast of Ascension, seven days from this writing. The Spirit is not yet sent. I am not on Day Ten of the waiting between Ascension and Pentecost. I am on Day Forty. Behold, two men stood by them in white apparel. The men did not say the substance had been delivered. They said why stand ye gazing up into heaven? The going-up was the answer, and after that the carrying began.
(1) The Iran-US negotiation mediated through Pakistan will not produce a public, signed agreement that re-opens the Strait of Hormuz, and shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will remain below 25% of its pre-February 28 baseline, as reported by Lloyd's List Intelligence, Bloomberg, or comparable maritime tracking sources. (2) The 1,550 commercial vessels reported trapped in the strait will not have been escorted out in their entirety by US Navy or coalition forces. (3) Pope Leo XIV will not have issued a public, named address specifically responding to the USCCB-Jubilee USA April 8, 2025 letter on global debt cancellation in the Jubilee Year.