little boats

I spent Saturday with a group from church on a “LifeCraft Retreat,” where we built little boats as metaphors of our life journeys. We all started with the same pieces of wood and a roomful of materials and possibilities and each emerged with small crafts that both showed parts of our stories and set sail in the small pool on the porch of the Stone House. As we went around the room telling what brought us to the retreat, we all talked about transitions, searching, grief.

It’s not easy to find your place in this world, even in these days of GPS.

Years ago, a song lodged in my heart that Noel Brazil wrote and Mary Black recorded. It came back to me this morning as I looked at the pictures from the retreat.

Columbus

Better keep your distance from this whale
Better keep your boat from going astray
Find yourself a partner and treat them well
Try to give them shelter night and day
‘Cause here in this blue light
Far away from the fireside
Things can get twisted and crazy and crowded
You can’t even feel right

So you dream of Columbus
Ever time the panic starts
You dream of Columbus
With your maps and your beautiful charts
You dream of Columbus
With an ache in your travelling heart

See how the cormorant swoops and dives
Must be some thrill to go that deep
Down to the basement of this life
Down to where the mermaid gently sleeps
Not like here in this blue light
Far away from the fireside
Where things can get twisted and haunted and crowded
You can’t even feel alright

And as tide must ebb and flow
I am dragged down under
And I wait the livelong day
For an end to my hunger

So I dream of Columbus
Every time that the panic starts
I dream of Columbus
With my maps and my beautiful charts
I dream of Columbus
And there’s peace in a traveling heart
I dream of Columbus

I’m sailing away . . .

Peace,
Milton