O' Captain, My Captain, Thy Ship Has Come Home!

Would you be willing to wait, your whole life for a love you could own? Or if you had barely survived a hellishly hot half-moon haze of heart-break that made your every day seem like a Tsunami survivor story. With wave after crushing wave of acidic loneliness churning your heart until it resembled the twisted wreckage of a ghost ship? Not to mention your dreams, torn identity and your fragile relationships like ragged flags on a broken mast flapping forlornly in the wind with no rescue ship on the horizon. How long would you wait…three…six… a decade? Perhaps….Twelve years!!! Read these questions into your compass, if you are on a quest otherwise sail on further…

You see that burly man with the stormy hair and a crinkly smile? I could call him Captain Jack Sparrow for the route he sailed to face those questions (unlike the reel inebriated character) but I’ll just call him, Captain. For he had the courage to battle those hungry ghosts whilst on a quest for hope like it was the Black Pearl and found his ‘Elizabeth’ too. She is the one standing next to him in the picture. He is also the guy you go looking for when you seek answers to those questions for yourself.

I met him one hot summer in 1998. He brought a team of fund raisers and marketers to a project for street children in Kanpur. He was the seasoned veteran of many programs; I was the young upstart trying to make their visit worthwhile. For three days, their incessant questions dried my throat up, but we were all inspired by the end of the trip. The Captain took his crew home but we kept in touch. Over the next twelve years, we met at myriad shores… meetings, train stations, hotels, airports, cities and countries, our homes and even a seminary! As our own stories as men intersected, the crisscrossed longitudinal lines of friendship and purpose on our individual navigation charts blurred. Sometimes life seemed for us like a vast ocean – her alluring azure dazzled us with a mirage of unkept promises, fake siren calls and feral eyes watching from the dark, ever glowing but formless. Sometimes our storylines were ship-wrecked on doubtful shores; a barren waiting for the elusive glimmer of change. But we did our best to read our navigation charts and our maritime courses intersected close enough to point us towards the North Star of God’s love and grace through the miles of frozen blue wasteland.

When we anchored at port, we would catch up over a meal and talk about everything that was precious to us including the fearful – the laughter of children; the holy sound of families; the gift of friends; our shared vocation to serve the vulnerable; music and authors; the meanings of books and sometimes our hopes for the future. The conversations between us helped us celebrate the intangibles of life at its vibrant best. We talked until we split open the kernel of every thought that was dear to us. He once told me that he was sure he would end up in communal home where people who have nowhere to go, live out the rest of their lives. The wonderful emulative attribute in all of this was his elastic faith in God, and something I coveted for myself too. Our conversations were curiously peppered with a mix of blessings (his) and expletives (mine) when it came down to discussing the writing of God’s hand into each of our lives. I sometimes used expletives for emphasis as if my heart was speaking in italics. My maverick faith had gifted me that right. He would smile at me in silent indulgent amusement and I never felt judged.

Last year - his twelfth year, the Captain’s ship caught a friendly tide and surprised by joy - took him unwaveringly to his Elizabeth. She had been waiting her whole life for him. On the ninth day of May of the thirteenth year, they were married in a chapel in Toronto, Canada. I congratulate them both and say to him, O’ Captain, my Captain, your ship has come home!” The waters around my ankles are now sweet and friendly and in our solidarity of brotherhood, our shared answer to anyone facing those questions is “Stay the course, as true as you can though the waters may be icy dark and howling deep, and God’s destiny for you will meet your joy!”

I look west where the shelf of cloud kisses the horizon of the sea. I just left a harbour town behind in my last long wake, and while I move on to the next one, I pray that God would send a gull chased ship to carry me onwards out to sea. Only this time, on a sea of liquid jade gently overshadowed by a sky of swans and a thousand splendid suns…