Touring a Ghost Ship

I'm generally not someone who would encourage trespassing or other illegal behavior, but I could not resist watching the video footage an "urban explorer"  captured aboard the salvaged wreck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, which is currently being stripped of its fittings in Genoa in preparation for scrapping.

An unknown individual, who identified himself on social media as "AdHoc" snuck aboard the ship at night sometime earlier this year and walked around filming and taking still photos of what he saw.

To someone who is somewhat familiar with passenger ships, it was eerie to see the spaces and shapes associated with a relaxed time at sea, now peeling and muddy and piled with garbage, having been "raised from the dead" last September in a pretty amazing feat of engineering that cost over $1 billion US (so far).

The Costa Concordia was cruising off the coast of Tuscany on the night of January 13th, 2012 when she struck a rock and began taking on water through a 230-foot gash in her hull.  In a rather grievous violation of maritime law, no abandon ship order was given for over an hour, by which time she had begun to heel over and drifted closer to shore. She eventually came to rest off the village of Giglio, which allowed some people to actually swim ashore.

Given how badly the evacuation was managed, it is somewhat amazing that of the 3,229 passengers and 1,023 crew members on board, only 32 died.  This was the largest passenger ship ever lost in peacetime, and her commander, Francesco Schettino, has been convicted of manslaughter based on his actions before and after the collision, which included having his girlfriend (neither a paying passenger nor a crew member) on board and in the wheelhouse at the time of the accident, and abandoning the ship himself before all the passengers were evacuated.  Australian journalist Phillip Knightley described the incident as the "most significant event in modern maritime history" because "every single safety procedure designed to make sea travel safe failed miserably."

The cruise line Costa Crociere S. p. A., is one of the brands owned by Carnival Corporation and the Concordia was built from the same plans as their Carnival Splendor.  Governing bodies and industry groups on both sides of the Atlantic reviewed and tightened safety procedures in the wake of the wreck, including that large vessels are expected to stay two miles from ecologically sensitive coastlines and that boat drills must be conducted before leaving port.

Running On Empty

This post was actually begun on the Feast of Christ the King, but needed to wait til now to be shared.
 
MY FRIEND MICHAEL SAYS THAT THE CHURCH WILL SUCK YOU DRY IF YOU LET IT. By that he means, if you don’t allow yourself say “no” sometimes, you will find yourself on every committee and guild, and have guilt pangs if you ever have to leave before the last dish is washed and the last chair is stacked, despite the insistence of the EMTs carrying your stretcher towards the ambulance. There is a truthism that if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. The church seems to have taken this very seriously, maybe because it works. For them. For a while. But then what?

I read an article recently called “The Rise of the Dones”. Basically, the Dones are the people above. They have volunteered at the soup kitchen and taught Sunday School and stuffed envelopes and sat through all three liturgical cycles five or twenty times and heard seemingly every possible take on the readings from the pulpit. They grow tired of feeling that no how matter how much they do, it is never enough. Up your pledge, stay on vestry one more year, miss your TV show or your kid's game for that meeting. So, they bolt.

A dear clergy friend from whom I sought counsel told me it was totally okay that my partner and I left our church because it wasn't working out with the new rector. As she put it, we were not being fed. Her assumption, and ours, was that we would look around, find someplace else, and feel fed again. And we tried. We went to about twelve places with no expectations, and landed on one where the rector was everything his counterpart was not. We did our best to adapt to the way things were done differently, and struggled to fit in, until he abruptly left six months later. We stuck it out for another six months or so, and finally drifted away. Well, my partner drifted; I walked out in the middle of a service and never went back. That was over  a year ago, and I have not gone to church regularly in all that time. It is no-one's fault; it's just how things are right now.

Separately from, but related to that, I have concluded all but one of the ministries in which I am involved.  If you read my previous post "Hurt People Hurt People" you know as much about that as I do.

Am I a "done"? I don't know, but -- as my friend Matthew says -- I can sure see it from where I live.

I don’t want be a Done. It’s not that I don’t miss it. Sometimes I do, but it’s hard for me to articulate whether I miss something I actually had, or am pining for a kind of community that I have yet to find, or create.

I am being fed, through recitation of the Daily Office (boy howdy, those lenten psalms are rough, but apropos) and the Church of the Internet.  You can attend morning prayer online with a group and find wisdom and beauty from all quarters in music and writing.  The prophetic Jennifer Thorson wrote an absolutely brilliant sermon for Christ the King:

“The Rich and Powerful of today are not listening to Scripture any more than the Kings and Queens of the past who claimed that their leadership was a Divine Right. Earthly rulers may push and shove to get their way, they may see themselves as God-like, but the God of our scripture is a Shepherd King with dirt under his nails instead of blood on his hands, and the earthly powers are mere sheep, just as the exiled Israelites of Ezekiel’s time were sheep, just as you and I and the poorest of our brothers and sisters are sheep.”

I do go to actual church sometimes. During a trip to North Carolina, I visited a parish I helped my friends find and join a few years ago. They had a guest preacher (Jeffrey Pugh, Ph.D.) , and his take on the Gospel parable of the unprepared bridesmaids was to use the lack of oil as a metaphor for contemporary fatigue, confusion and despair:

“Immersed in a world that seems bereft of hope or promise, we still wait for the Not Yet. We wait for deliverance from empire that grinds us all down by its incessant demand for more power. We exist in the middle of a world where any lie is told to gain control over others, and wealth is used by an oligarchy to oppress those who do not have the ability to fight back. We await in the darkness of billions of dollars spent on weapons of destruction, and of political propaganda to maintain control, and it keeps us all -- especially the rich and the powerful and those who benefit from this -- in a great darkness that leaves us feeling our way along a long dark tunnel of any light. We are exhausted, and our light has gone out.”

A few weeks later, two friends and I “did church” of a different sort, driving 2 1/2 hours to Lancaster, Pa., to hear author Anne Lamott speak. Her voice resonates with me the strongest, here in the tunnel, because she makes no pretense of being any better at it than I am. Completely forthright about her own fractured upbringing, struggles with addiction, and “teeny control issues” she told us that God fully expects us to be messy, and grouchy, and selfish sometimes. That was a relief to hear, because I don't even have her dissonance-inducing compulsion to be perfect. But listening to her tell of her friends and family members, followed by the stories some of the other audience members shared, I couldn’t help but feel like a little bit of a jackass. Yes, our church experience got screwed up, but nobody died, or even stole my sticker collection. And I am surrounded by loving and talented people who give tremendously of themselves.

So maybe I need to shut the hell up. I can be fed, if I take the time to look and listen. And more importantly, I can make sure that others are. Pugh and Lamott had similar answers, on the theme of Don’t Become Part of the Problem. She suggested treating yourself to TV and m&m's for a few days, but ultimately, find someone to talk to. Or sit with a kid and make angels out of coffee filters. Her congregation of 32 people operates on the thinnest and most frayed of shoestrings, but she describes it as a place of unspeakable joy, and I believe her. I pray that I will have that feeling about church again someday.

Pugh says, “Christ returns to every heart that makes room for forgiveness and grace. The second coming happens every single day we choose to make peace instead of war; every moment when we extend mercy to those in need. It is not the constant watching that is the heart of faith; it is the preparation for the long haul. I can manage being kind for fifteen minutes in a day... but a lifetime?”

I guess we can find out.

After the Fire, the Fire Still Burns

Phillips Brooks - Bishop & Preacher (1893)

Those in our area could not miss the headline earlier this week of a five-alarm fire that destroyed much of an apartment complex known as Avalon at Edgewater. If you've been around a while, you may remember that the same complex burned in 2000 as construction neared completion.

I'm not really wild about the trend toward wood frame construction for high-density housing like this.  With over 400 apartments in a city block, that's a lot of stoves, candles, extension cords, heaters, potentially careless smokers, etc., in a small area.  The building is still relatively new, but what happens when wiring and other material is 30, 40, 50 years old?  It is not as if it is cheap to live there, either; I saw mention of rents upwards of $3,000 a month.  We're getting two similar complexes in our town (one by the same developers) and I expressed concern to town officials that we may be exposed to similar risks.

On Thursday the Newark Star Ledger reported that a worker's blowtorch accidentally started the blaze, and that the crew called and spoke to their supervisor for 15 minutes before dialing 9-1-1, thus critically delaying firefighters' response.  This reminded me of another fire, which took place right across the river at Pier 88 in the Passenger Ship Terminal, seventy-three years ago this coming February 8th.

The SS Normandie, luxurious flagship of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, took shelter in New York when World War 2 began. Her crew remained on board until December 1941, when she was seized by the U.S. Navy and renamed the USS Lafayette, vessel AP-53.

Workers using blowtorches to remove iron handrails in the ship's cavernous first-class lounge accidentally ignited a stack of life preservers, which were full of a very flammable substance called Kapok.  They attempted to extinguish the fire, but the ship's sophisticated sprinkler system had been abandoned by the Navy and they quickly discovered that the fittings did not match American hoses.

The fire spread rapidly; the Normandie boasted numerous large public spaces (the First Class restaurant was longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles) which unfortunately acted  like a giant chimney. The FDNY used every means at its disposal to pour water on the ship, and she soon began a dangerous list away from the pier.  Her Russian-born designer Vladimir Yourkevitch arrived at the scene and attempted to provide expertise that would have possibly saved her, but he was ignored.  In the middle of the night, like a suffering whale that beaches itself, the beautiful ship fell on her side in the muck.

Burned-out wreck of the USS Lafayette (ex-Normandie) lies on her side at New York's Pier 88
PHOTO CREDIT: James Vaughan. Used under Creative Commons License. Some rights reserved.

She would remain there for a year, an embarrassing waste.  The Navy considered re-purposing her as an aircraft carrier, but the damage was found to be too extensive and they focused on other priorities.  She was scrapped at Port Newark after the war's end.  Luckily, much of her interior fittings had been removed and stored before the disaster, and can be seen in places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Our Lady of Lebanon (the Maronite Catholic Cathedral in Brooklyn), and the Chicago Hilton.

Like the Avalon fire, her loss was ruled an accident, and--also similarly--the response immediately after it began played heavily into the outcome.  The design of passenger ships has changed significantly since then; the SS United States, launched 12 years later, had almost no wood on board, and both she and the SS France employed large amounts of asbestos, which was also subsequently ruled to be hazardous.  Large spaces like those aboard Normandie now have to be subdivided by fire-suppressing bulkheads and doors.

But, on land, are similar precautions being taken?  Hopefully we will not have to wait 73 years for a lesson from the Avalon fire to be learned.

40 Symptoms of the 40s Gay Man

PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Ter Haar
Used via Creative Commons
Some rights reserved

So, a friend posted this list of forty sucky things that a 40-year-old woman experiences, and it got a chuckle.  I thought it would be funny to compare my own list, much of which overlaps.  It will be funnier if you read that list first, as they sort of line up.  Sort of.

1. I have no clue what's on MTV. Do we get MTV? I can’t find the remote.
2. Gay shelf life is a thing.  Bars and parties that seem fun in the constant promos they send... yay Netflix!
3. My entry in “movember” or any other facial-hair trend will be gray/white and thus put on ten years.  What works for Anderson Cooper makes me look like an aging owl during molting season.
4. Should we fool around or watch a mo… zzzz
5. The beer I drank on Super Bowl Sunday is still inside me somewhere.
6. Wake up with that “but it’s a good hurt” feeling, like you did a heavy workout the day before… but you didn’t.
7. Doctor’s appointment beginning to resemble a bad encounter with the TSA.
8. Not that I'd leave my job and family to become a rich guy's houseboy and live on his yacht, but it was nice when that was at least a remote possibility.
9. Going shirtless in public is seeming more and more like an aggressive act.
10. The "me" in my head gets hit on by the “me” in the mirror... and shot down
11. Mark Wahlberg still has that body. I, on the other hand...
12. If I strolled across a college campus, people would ask I was lost or possibly tell security about the homeless-looking old guy
13. The only place I get carded is the airport. Bonus: car insurance keeps dropping
14. The mall, once my place of employment and the social epicenter, is like a visit to another, hostile planet. Any clothing that appeals to me is “too young for you” and doesn’t come in my size. Have actually purchased clothes at Costco. Does it have a drawstring or elastic waist? Take four of them.
15. Random hairs. Wherever they feel like. Try and stop ‘em.
16. I still like new music and go see it live, but people assume I’m there to clean up afterwards.
17. Everything I wore in high school is probably somewhere in the house. If the hipsters want it, they can come find it.
18. Whole TV series have been created, cancelled and become “classics” and I still haven’t heard of them. Where’s the remote?
19. My employer will be paying my Medicare Part B someday and I actually understand what that means.
20. I would not know Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, or any of these people “you’re supposed to like” if I tripped on them. Whatever happened to Cher and Madonna?
21. Christmas, which used to start after Thanksgiving, now starts before Halloween. I think in our lifetimes, next Christmas will start before this Christmas.
22. All the Abercrombie & Fitch went to the church thrift shop a while back. “Tell your son thank you for us!” Um, yeah, sure will.
23. Have you seen my glasses?  $300 designer frames once every two years has morphed into a new $18 pair of readers from the drug store every few weeks because I keep losing or breaking them.
24. Now that everybody has unlimited talk time, all my phone conversations are conference calls for work.
25. All the concerts, clubs, and clothes I used to scrimp for are more within the budget, and yet I’m usually home on Saturday night and fine with that… mostly.
26. If I was to flirt with the cable guy, police would probably be called. I just want the remote.
27. If a good-looking, 21-year-old guy is friendly to me, he is trying to sell something.
28. Naked pictures? I’d rather have Stacy’s Naked Pita Chips… with hummus please!
29. I’m tempted to put tape over the front camera on my phone to avoid an accidental “selfie"
30. Sagging your pants is not a fashion or political statement, it means your gut is pushing them down! Forget your suspenders again, grandpa?
31. Touching my toes is easy… I’m already sitting down!
32. When we go on a date in a classy restaurant, the mood is broken when I use the flashlight on my phone to read the menu. Left my glasses in the car.
33. Impulsively buy vitamins, take them for three days, find the expired jar a year later.  Can't read the label anyway.
34. A dog used to be a social accessory, so you could meet guys while walking/running him in a park. That rarely happens when you push him out on the back deck in your sweatpants and slippers.
35. Every new exercise, eating, or other good behavior is going to happen “starting on Monday”.
36. Post-bar at the diner, with the attendant flirting and gossip, has morphed into brunch at the diner with everybody looking at their phones.
37. Instead of open bar, we look for BYOB and show up with Costco wine.
38. Birthday party went from all-night in the city to … could we just forget about it please?
39. I have nine pairs of $#@*(#@( glasses, where the #$@*#$@(*#@( are they?
40. In my head, I am “dude” or “bro”. To the world I am “sir”. Can’t “sir” be my dad for just a little longer, please?

Sleep in Heavenly Peace?

Lillian Thrasher - Missionary to Egypt (1961) 

  HEARD TELL, PERHAPS APOCRYPHAL, SOME YEARS AGO OF A SERMON given--if memory serves me--by our former bishop, the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong. His Grace began by drawing a Johari window-style diagram, with four unlabeled panes, on an easel pad and asked the congregants to rattle off things they knew about the Christmas story ("laid in a manger" "three wise men" "answering the census", etc.) which he proceeded to put in one of the boxes without comment.

 When he was satisfied, he labeled the boxes "Matthew" "Luke" "John" and "Hallmark". Guess which one had the most in it?

The sermon was intended to educate us about what we know, vs. what we think we know about the birth of Christ. As I have embarked as an adult on a more informed understanding of my faith, I have discovered that much of the "givens" with which I had grown up are not scriptural in origin, and even the ones that are still find themselves subject to nuances of interpretation. For example, nowhere in Scripture does it say there were three wise men, but yet we "know" this and we even "know" their names.

Shine on, Surfer Jesus

A lot of my early faith experiences were surrounded by imagery that --although we kidded around about it during my formative years in Roman Catholic youth groups and campus ministries--undoubtedly had an effect on how I "saw" the people and places in these stories.  For the most part they were depicted as photogenic Caucasians, generally Nordic-looking (Jesus) or Slavic (Mary), spotlessly clean and groomed, and always with a white dinner plate inexplicably fixed to the back of their heads.  As a child I wondered is it strapped on, or is it just hovering behind them, like the Good Witch Glinda's transporter bubble?

Even today when I search Youtube to hear some of the music that evokes that time for me, the videos (often lovingly if amateurishly produced by the faithful) show Jesus tall and chiseled, his grin perfect and his blond highlights catching the sun off the Galilee, looking for all the world like he might have just left his surfboard on the beach.

This does of course not fit with even the assumptions we can safely make in absence of facts.  Icelandair did not serve Tel Aviv in the time these stories described, and nothing we've been able to find suggests Jesus worked as an Abercrombie & Fitch greeter prior to his public ministry. The Holy Family and Jesus' subsequent followers were in--all likelihood--short (by today's standards), olive-skinned, hairy, and frequently wont of a bath.

This was all brought to mind recently by a wonderful article by Joe Kay about holiday manger scenes, where he asks why these characters are all portrayed as serene and picture-perfect (and, inexplicably, Norwegian) despite what little we know about the journey they took, the conditions in which they lived, the money they didn't have?  I won't try to paraphrase what Mr. Kay says, because frankly I can't improve upon it:

"If our manger scenes were realistic, Mary would be recovering from a painful labor full of sweat and blood, with a look on her face that’s anything but serene. And Joseph — wouldn’t he be a nervous wreck, too? His hand too shaky to hold a lantern?

And about that newborn. Shouldn’t he be red-faced and screaming? Eyes clenched closed and wisps of hair stuck to the top of a head that‘s still odd-shaped from all the squeezing?

Instead, we’ve sanitized and romanticized it. We’ve removed all the blood and sweat and tears and pain and goo. It’s no longer something real. We’ve left out all the messy parts. The oh-my-God-what-now parts. The I’m-screaming-as-loud-as-I-can-because-it-really-hurts parts. The oh-crap-I’ve-stepped-in-the-animal-droppings parts. The real parts."

Nativity scene at St. George's Church, Kobanya, Budapest, Hungary
PHOTO CREDIT: András Fülöp Used under Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved

Since we have artistic control of how we "see" them, why do choose to make them look perfect and unflustered when we know this was not the case? Why--as we struggle to make this more than a season of spending money we don’t have to buy people, some of whom we don’t even like, gifts they don’t need; eating and drinking too much and then feeling guilty--do we give the heroes of this story supernatural powers they didn’t have (endless energy, patience, WetNaps...) and make them less like us? 

I think it is a shame that the canonical Gospels don't include the argument after Joseph refused to ask for directions and the donkey ended up circling Bethlehem for 45 minutes with his left signal on, or the talking-to Jesus got when the bus had to go all the way back to Jerusalem because he was still at the temple, wowing 'em with his mad parable skillz.  We set ourselves up for disappointment when we fall for the notion that everybody else's Christmas looks like the families in TV ads, with nobody arguing or making hard choices about how to afford it all.

As for me and my house, we’d prefer a savior who chuckles and nods knowingly when we vacuum around the piles of clutter, or "phone in" the office potluck by putting something from the deli in our own Corningware. That is the God who may wince a little when we are short-tempered or selfish, but has been there and gets it. This is a time of year when many of us are faced, more than any other time, with the urge to curl up in a ball, mid-gift wrap or bike-assembly, and cry a little. That is a God I could call on in my darkest hour and expect to be understood, and Kay seems to agree:

"We acknowledge our brokenness, and God responds with a kiss on our sweaty faces and goo-covered foreheads. Reminds us that even though we make mistakes and bad choices, we ourselves are never a mistake or a bad choice. Instead, we are always a chosen miracle. And when we feel totally broken, that’s when we’re the most beloved."

If your sugarplums are all color-coordinated and your family beach photo with the Santa hats came out perfectly on the first try, more power to you. Go ahead and carve your nativity figures out of cream cheese just like Martha taught you.  We, the Chaos Muppets, may need to tape a sheep's leg back on or bring in the Power Ranger understudy for one of the shepherds, but each will nonetheless be a familiar home to the Savior when he comes.

May God bless us, every one.

I Knew Where He Hid the Pigeons

John Wyclif - Translator & Controversialist (1384) 

Through the generosity of a friend, I got to attend a lecture by Alan Alda at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, as part of the New Jersey Speakers Series sponsored by Fairleigh Dickinson University.

I knew very little about Alda's life other than his involvement with M*A*S*H, and was intrigued to learn about his upbringing.  His father Robert Alda was an actor and his mother, Joan Browne, was a homemaker who struggled with mental illness and died when he was ten. As a child, he survived polio and endured his father's misguided attempt to console him over the untimely death of his cocker spaniel by having the poor animal stuffed (referenced in the title of Alda's memoir).

From a young age, Alda was brought along on the burlesque circuit with his parents. He vividly recalled life at age three, being collectively mothered by chorus girls and watching the show from the wings, triggering his ambition to follow his father into show-business.  From that young age, he had an understanding of the inner workings of entertainment that few get to see. "I knew where he hid the pigeons," he said of the show's magician.

Alan Alda at USC in 2008
PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Carvin
Used by Creative Commons License. Some rights reserved

Subscribers to the lecture series were able to submit questions, which sparked a discussion after the lecture itself was over.  Predictably, many of them were about M*A*S*H and Alda's character, Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce.  I learned that the show had originally been conceived as a comedy along the lines of Hogan's Heroes, but Alda --  believing the show had a responsibility to more accurately portray life in the midst of war -- convinced the producers to take it in a more sober direction. He wrote and directed many of the later episodes himself, including the series finale, which was at the time the highest-viewed television episode in history.

Among Alda's favorite memories of the show was the episode in which his father guest-starred as a visiting medic. Their characters each sustain injuries to one hand and perform an operation together, each using their "good" hand.  This was the senior Alda's idea, which his son originally rejected but then agreed to use, and still cites as a major growth point in their relationship.

Besides M*A*S*H, among other acting and producing roles (including The Four Seasons and The West Wing, for which he was considered for the lead), Alda produced a series of interviews for PBS with scientists in various fields of study, which at one point took him to an observatory 8,000 feet up a Peruvian mountain. While there, he was struck with an intestinal malady requiring emergency surgery (ironically, a procedure with which Alda was familiar because his M*A*S*H character "Hawkeye" had to perform it).  He described how surviving that experience made him feel incredibly alive and appreciative of the world around him, and resolved to keep that awareness and gratitude intact for the rest of his life.

Alda also founded and is an active part of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University on Long Island.  Alda had realized, through his work interviewing researchers and other experts, that there is frequently a disconnect between these highly intelligent folks doing very important work, and those who need to understand its potential benefits. He gave an example of a congressional hearing where the politicians were clearly mystified by what was being presented, despite being charged with determining if it should be funded.  The Alda Center is charged with helping science students communicate the purpose and importance of their work to those outside the discipline, including the media, government officials, and the public as a whole.

And All This Time the River Flowed

Yesterday, I was privileged to see a performance of Sting's new musical The Last Ship, currently in previews on Broadway.  A project that had been in the works since 2010, the production follows a concept album in 2013 last year (from which only some tracks made it to the score as presented to us) and a short run in Chicago.

Set in the village of Wallsend-on-Tyne in northeastern England, the show is a stylized account of the conclusion in 2007 of shipbuilding activity by Swan-Hunter, whose accomplishments include the legendary Cunarders RMS Mauretania (holder of the transatlantic speed record) and Carpathia (rescuer of the RMS Titanic survivors). Wallsend produced the last passenger liner built in the United Kingdom (the MS Vistafjord for Norwegian America Line, which later also sailed for Cunard as Caronia) in 1973.

MS Vistafjord, the last liner built in the UK, shown here in Cunard colors at anchor in
Geirangerfjord, Norway in 1993 PHOTO CREDIT: flickr.com/aah-yeah Used under Creative
Commons.  Some rights reserved.

The show begins with a flashback of sorts, as Joe Fletcher (Jamie Jackson) is injured on the job and wants his son Gideon (Montclair's own Collin Kelly-Sordelet) to assume his place as breadwinner by becoming an apprentice at the yard.  Gideon rejects this idea and instead signs on as a merchant mariner, promising girlfriend Meg (Rachel Tucker) he will be back for her.

Returning fifteen years later upon the news of his father's death, Gideon (played as an adult by Michael Esper) learns that the yard is to be closed for lack of any further work. This is semi-factual: Following delays and cost overruns, the still-incomplete HMS Lyme Bay, the last vessel to be laid down at Wallsend, was towed in 2006 to a competing yard and Swan Hunter was barred from further naval contracts, ending 130 years of shipbuilding on the Tyne.

Gideon seeks out Meg and discovers she is less than receptive to a reconciliation, her feelings complicated by a teenage son Tom (also portrayed by Kelly-Sordelet) and another man, Arthur (Aaron Lazar), who wants to marry her.  Arthur (also a former shipbuilder) has taken a job with a company that wants to see the yard sold and used for shipbreaking and scrapping, an idea the workers find repulsive and insulting.

Encouraged by the parish priest (brilliantly wrought by Fred Applegate... if ever there was a right priest for a particular congregation, Fr. James O'Brien is it!), the workers, including Gideon and Tom, defiantly embark -- against all odds -- on one more project, which symbolizes their collective well-being and pride.

In 2007 the Wallsend cranes, which had dominated the skyline for generations , were dismantled and
shipped to India. 
PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Gallagher. Used under Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved

I will not spoil with more details of the plot.  I have read that the show is semi-autobiographical, which leads me to wonder what Sting's upbringing was like. There is no mother in the play, and the relationship between Gideon and Joe is clearly freighted, with allusions to abuse.  The singer's parents died of cancer within months of each other in 1987 and he explained in a 1996 interview with Q that he declined to attend their funerals, and later regretted it.  A period of writer's block followed, and it was not until he released The Soul Cages in 1991 that he felt properly able to mourn.

"My father was... snatched away from me at the wrong time. For me and for him. It was just at the point when I was beginning to make my journey home and understand my parents more - the decisions they made,"  Sting observed.  "Having written the songs, what I learnt was to forgive myself for my part in it and forgive my father and my mother for what they did that hurt me."

In parallel, Gideon misses Jim's funeral by mere days and is forced to work through unrequited feelings as the story unfolds.  Two tracks from The Soul Cages, "Island of Souls" and "All this Time", accompany original songs in the show.

The play gives you a lot to chew on.  The theme is one that has repeated itself many times, some of them in places a lot closer to home, as traditional ways of earning a living handed down by generations give way to technology and globalization.

Layer that with the complex relationships between the players as they make difficult choices, and a cast that does well to get you invested as if this was really happening around you. Musically, Sting's influence is heavy, but he draws well from the history of the area, particularly for the company pieces.

The Last Ship is in previews at the Neil Simon Theater.

Peace the World Cannot Give

Teresa of Avila - Reformer & Contemplative (1582)

Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

I feel surrounded by so much sadness and strife lately.  Beyond my job (which is a blog unto itself) and the conflicts in the the world (anybody notice how the Ukraine bit seems to have been eclipsed by the ISIS, which was in turn eclipsed by the Ebola? It's as if we have only the brain-power for one crisis at a time), I was involved in a leadership change at an organization of which I am a part, with the attendant posturing and choosing of sides.  And before that could settle down, there is the upheaval at General Theological Seminary, which does not affect me directly but has had a profound impact on many of my friends in the church, either alumni or friends of faculty and students.  Meanwhile, two of my siblings were trying to comfort their spouses and their families through painful times, and I find myself struggling to be Useful and if not Useful at least not Part of the Problem.

I can't speak with any great wisdom on any of these things.  I am not politically savvy, I have no thirst for debate or inherent desire to be right. I can only tell about the way they make me feel, wonder where Christ is in all of this, and maybe hold your hand for a minute and extend the notion, perhaps a naive one, that it will all sort itself out.

If you are not already a fan, I commend you to the earthly patron saint of the Chaos Muppets, Anne Lamott.  On a recent Facebook post (and if you're not following, you simply must), she began:

"Many mornings I check out the news as soon as I wake up, because if it turns out that the world is coming to an end that day, I am going to eat the frosting off an entire carrot cake; just for a start. Then I will move onto vats of clam dip, pots of crime brûlée, nachos, M & M's etc. Then I will max out both my credit cards."

That is my kind of prophesy.  Hold the clam dip in my case, but feel free to improvise as local custom dictates. The point is that -- as you keep reading -- you learn that she is facing an unspeakably sad situation, surrounded as many of us are with many others.  But she approaches each with tenderness and grace, humor when appropriate, and handfuls of M&M's if that's what it takes.  She messes up, as we all do, and owns up to it readily. That is the person I strive to be, and -- short of any gifts of healing I haven't yet discovered -- that is probably about as close to "Christ's hands on earth" as I am likely to get.

In the midst of all this, I was lucky to spend a few days with a dear friend at Weston Priory.  As I alluded to in the recent post "Hurt People Hurt People" this Benedictine monastery is my muster station for the zombie apocalypse, the thinnest thin place I know, where I can actually believe for a moment that I might be a beloved child of God.

The Brothers say very little in public, but their tranquility speaks volumes, and their smiles reflect an inner peace that I envy.  They work hard (maintaining a working farm of many acres, and they are not teenagers) but in prayer and song they are extremely gentle, and the very simple services (you get no hymnal or missal, not even a piece of paper... just listen, listen and repeat) are rich with moments of profound holiness for those present.

The altars at Weston are the only Roman Catholic ones where I still feel called to receive the sacrament.  All these years later, one thing I still miss about the Mass is this verse (rough recollection of how they say it):

Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles:
I leave you peace, my peace I give you.
Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your people,
and grant us the peace and unity of your realm
where you live for ever and ever.