"Dear Lord be good to me…. the sea is so wide and my boat is so small." ~Children's Defense Fund
I have spent the last several days in the Pacific Northwest as we visit colleges with our younger son. It is always wonderful to be able to travel time zones and enter into the ways and days of other parts of our beautiful country. I always recognize this as the privilege it is. You have the opportunity to see people going about their daily lives, going to work and school, doing their grocery shopping, taking in their mail, and know that, while you do the same in your part of the world, their experience is somewhat different given the climate, the culture, the landscape. Here in Washington and Oregon, everything seems to be colored by the mountains….seeing them, being surrounded by them, hoping to glimpse them through gray skies and the rain that falls frequently. We have been blessed by sun and green and the colors of spring flowers.
On our first morning in Seattle we awoke early with our bodies on Midwestern time. We got up and headed out to find a cup of coffee….a very easy task in Seattle…..and made our way to the water. Walking near Lake Union we came upon the Museum of Wooden Boats. Large tugboats and small, colorful rowboats lined the docks. We wandered about looking at the unique vessels that had been created by loving, creative hands.
While looking at a canoe that had clearly been carved out of a large cedar tree and painted with Native symbols of fish and birds, a man walked up to us. He identified himself as the Artist-in-Residence of the Museum. He proceeded to tell us about how the boat had been carved by several generations together, school children and elders, parents and mentors, all carving and being instructed in the ancient craft of canoe building. He exuded wisdom and a sense of Spirit. He talked about how important it was to pass on to our young ones the gifts of the ancestors and to be present to the wisdom the young ones bring to us.
On the shore a young man arrived to begin a morning of carving with the artist. He headed to a shelter that held a work-in-progress of a very large canoe. As he and the young man explained to us the process of carving, of the large rocks that needed to be heated in very, hot fires that would be placed in saltwater inside the canoe which would bend the canoe in the proper way, we recognized that we had been given a great gift in happening upon this man.
And then he turned to us and asked if he could offer us his song. From my understanding of Native cultures I knew that we were being offered an even greater gift. We stood, rapt, as this tall, long-haired gentleman(and I use that in its truest sense) sang a song that welcomed the morning and thanked the Creator for the gifts of the day. He sang for the elders and for the youth and for the continuation of all. He sang for the tree that had given it very self for the boat and for the great circle of life of which we are all a part.
As we walked away from this experience, I knew that we had been offered a visitation. As we headed off into the adventure of launching our son in the next phase of his life, it seemed apt that this wise man had called us into the wider, greater circle and reminded us of our place in it. Yes, our boats are small but we row these seas with a vast array of companions, accompanied all the while by the Creator who birthed the sea on which we travel and holds each of us in tender care.