A cruise is not just a vacation: it is an experience of sharing a globe

 For twelve days we cruised east from Florida and then circling back along an island chain. It was sailing by night, a port to explore by day. The sea was beautiful, sometimes dotted with the volcanic mountain tops that had risen out of the ocean deeps, imagination provoking in their now loveliness. 

Always there is a sense of a changing self. Never again will I watch the weather channel indifferently as the “small tropical disturbance” begins to form off Africa. 

It was the crew, however, that we found most impressive. There were forty-four nations among them, all utilizing  their secondary language with us (and undoubtedly to each other). “Where are you from?” “Where have you been?” were ordinary questions. English was the currency by which we communicated. We could communicate, truly a miracle; the resulting experience is that we are more and more living on a globe. Looking out towards the horizons when at sea, the world is vast; so small when you look at a name tag and ask someone offering you coffee, “Where are you from?”

I was looking at the hostess in the lounge one afternoon. A young woman dressed in astonishingly bright yellow. She was dealing with a situation with charming command. I fell to wondering if, when she next went home, perhaps she might go into politics. In ten years she might be serving in her country’s United Nations delegation, astonishing in her ability to engage others in an empathic understanding. What potentialities are going on in these shipboard processes, so largely simply floating by.

We had two very pleasant young women attending our stateroom, both from the Ukraine. Anastasiya was dark haired and dark eyes, and I thought of those persons, once-upon-a-time, from the east; Marina was blonde and blued eyes, and a remembrance of things Nordic. Anatasiya left the ship immediately on docking; she was going home; a mother was expecting her. Marina had another four months to go. One is half a world away, the other, we cannot know where; when we left, I noted she wore a simple gold ring on her right hand. We live on a globe, a small one, really.

Now - thank you, Paul – if I can just get my mind around the world saving process of the Christ, I really will have a 

perspective.

           The Apostle Paul and Post-Traumatic Stress, From Woundedness to Wholeness is now available to Amazon