Blessing of the Fleet

I have been in a phase lately where there’s been so much to feel, but precious little time to write it out. I’ve thought about writing quite a bit, working out essays in my head, but not getting them written out.

I did get a piece written for the Tower Harbour Yacht Club’s annual Blessing of the Fleet. This is my third opportunity to speak at their season opening. I think it’s hard to know what to say that will resonate with a group of spiritual strangers. The topic of faith rarely comes up among boaters. Writing essays here has honed my writing, and changed the focus of who I’m writing for. The Blessing of the Fleet 2019 was written for my pleasure, and not my audience, and they, like you, get to read my thoughts.

The Blessing of the Fleet is an ancient Christian tradition, believed to have begun along the Mediterranean Sea where priests would bless the boats and the captains, asking in prayer for a good catch of fish during the season, and the safety of those that go to sea. This is a practice begun centuries before weather forecasts, satellites and radar. A time when people sought a higher power with authority over the winds and seas, as us mere mortals had no such power.

Today, we still gather to bless our boats, knowing full well we are powerless to hold back the rising lake level, or flood waters.

All life that we know depends upon water: Water is life. This theme is found in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, in the Quran, in the sacred texts of almost every faith tradition.

As boaters, water becomes our life. We might drive many miles to be here on the shared waters of Lake Michigan. Many of us travel in the Winter to where the water is liquid and warm. As winter dragged on, my wife and I immersed ourselves in a Youtube series that kept the hope of summer alive in spite of the dark and cold.

We may own our boat, and rent a slip, but the waters are shared among all of us and the creatures within it. No matter whether your boat is powered by wind, or fuel, or paddle. No matter whether it barely fits in your slip, or tucks neatly in to the trunk of a car. The water is shared by each of us.

As we pass out the turquoise ribbons we will put on our boats, let it be a symbol that our boats are blessed, that each of us is blessed, and the waters we ply are shared waters. Tie it to your wheel, or your rigging. Place it where you’ll remember this day.

I’ve recently come across a Jainist sutra that spoke to me: The body is like a boat, and our soul is a sailor. As we turn our gathering to remember those whose ‘boats’ were here last year, but now they sail on different waters, I invite you to speak their names:

We gather up those whose names have been spoken, those that are known in our hearts and put their memory into this bouquet of flowers and place it on the waters. I close this time together with the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

Crossing the Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
I bid you fair winds and following seas this season.