Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home

Having learned no lessons from my previous  foray into  the “reply to all” button, I determined to do it again. On account of a number of friends no longer including me on lists for their mass forwarded emails, I had to check the junk mail folder. As unfortunate as it may be, we all have friends whose original thoughts are so often captured better by others , that we never receive anything other than forwarded emails from them. Actually, it wasn’t my friend at all, but my wife’s, and when I asked permission to respond in the same manner as the one  in the original “Having fun with the ‘Reply To All’ button,” she sighed at my childishness and told me to go ahead.

This forwarded email contained either an essay or a talk by Dr. David Barton titled Dr. David Barton – On Obama. It was a  hum-drum litany in Glenn Beck’s English of why the author felt a moral calling to not respect the person holding the office of the President and closed with:  I pray that the results of this election will wake up many who have sat on the sidelines and allowed the Socialist-Marxist anti-GOD crowd to slowly change so much of what has been good in America!

Now I happen to agree with the bulk of what was written, but I take strong offense to the idea that anybody who might disagree needs to be labeled as part of the Socialist-Marxist anti-GOD crowd.

I know that certain folks can’t live without the name-calling-without-offering-any-ideas-for-solutions  politics made popular by certain politicians, but I find it quite distasteful and made that a point of my latest ‘Reply to All’ campaign:

Thank you for this well-worded platform of ideas to secure America’s future. For a time there, I thought perhaps that we should use our collective God-given talents to proffer constructive ideas to help this country move beyond the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression that our current president inherited, or to address why a nation that spends half-again as much per capita on health care than any other industrialized country, where health care is universal, can manage only to offer access to such care to 70% of its citizens, or, now that our corporations enjoy personhood, to hold them as accountable as the rest of us toward being good citizens.

It is refreshing to know that all I have to do to not be labeled among the Socialist-Marxist anti-GOD crowd is to turn off my brain, turn on my anger, and bitch about things in an attempt to achieve disunity in this great country. The best part is that I have permission from this author to claim that God is on my side in so doing.

Whew! Now I can relax.

Gregg Granger

http://www.faithofholland.com

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000426387180

The idea that I would use my webpage and facebook profile as a way of introducing myself to unknown recipients appalled the person from whom one response, again to all, came. Her response was quite well-thought, and equally well-written until the last paragraph where she just couldn’t contain herself anymore:  

We actually thought you were sincere and concerned about what is going on in this country until we realized that you were merely promoting your book, which we will not be purchasing.  We would have to question who has turned off their brain!!!!!!!!!!!

Another was concerned about my response to an email that was addressed to my wife:

The interception by you of something for your wife tells a great deal about you as an individual.  I have dealt with the likes of you for nearly 30 years so I “know” your type very well.

Thomas Jefferson once said “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.  The job of vigilance belongs to every true American who espouses the American ideals as their own.  There can be no vigilance provided during a three year hiatus at sea.  But there can be complete and total control of those at sea with you.  My concerns do not center on you; they are for your family.  The silence from your wife is deafening.

The only response to that is that we spent four and a half years at sea and that I have never found my wife’s silence to be deafening.

But the most fun I had with this little ‘reply to all’ thing came when I, along with the whole original list, received  a 2,357 word response (for the full text, with special insults highlighted, click here), that began:

Mr. Granger,

Sir, you are truly an ignoramus.  I do not know you, but I cannot resist the opportunity to address the haughty, condescending, elitist, and erroneous reply that you penned to the e-mail regarding David Barton.

The author continued, issuing personal insults at every opportunity, between 30 and 50, depending on exactly what constitutes an insult. I mean, does “haughty, condescending, elitist, and erroneous” in one sentence count as one insult or four?  The writer continues to cast various terms of endearment in my direction, such as dimwit, gutless imbecile, [my] infinitesimal brain, slobbering doofus, elitist little toad, and perhaps my favorite – bloviating buffoons like you.

I can’t let a word like bloviating go by without grabbing my dictionary, only to find out that the writer of that email might have checked his own dictionary.

All I could think of on receipt of this thoughtful essay highlighting  my better qualities was:

Wow, Joseph,

What say we be friends on Facebook?

Gregg

You know how you get that email, always forwarded, that strikes you as funny at best, or annoying to some degree at worst?

I got one last week that I had to respond to. A dear friend of mine, let’s call him Ralph,  forwarded it to me, along with twenty-four other ‘like-minded’ individuals (I’m not sure how I made the ‘like-minded’ list). It was titled The Rush Limbaugh Challenge, by P. J. Gladnick in a special to The Washington Examiner.  Should you not wish to read the entire essay, excerpts are:

I have found a fascinating phenomenon among liberals. They feel free to harshly criticize Rush Limbaugh yet rarely, if ever, listen to him. And when they do hear him it is in carefully selected brief excerpts or in second- or third-hand accounts. This leads to a lot of misconceptions on their part.

…So, Leonard, are you prepared to take The Rush Limbaugh Challenge? Listen to his full three hour broadcast for a month and report back your findings. However, a warning. Should you find anything good to say about Rush, you will be subjected to a venomous campaign of hate by the moonbats. On the plus side, there is a good chance that you could expand your political horizons.

I urge Leonard Fein and other non-moonbat liberals to take the Rush Limbaugh Challenge. You just might find yourselves breaking out of the stale liberal cocoon in which you are currently confined. So spread your shimmering wings in the warm sunlight of El Rushbo’s enlightenment and fly, butterfly, FLY!!!

This proved to be one of those emails that I simply couldn’t resist, and I thought a response was in order. Further, I anticipated better mileage by including all of the recipients of the first email. My response was:

Is this article suggesting it takes 60 hours of Rush to hear him say something meaningful?

Seems like a silly investment to me.

Gregg (The Moonbat) Granger

I was promptly rewarded with a response from Bill, again mailed to all 25 of us:

No!  60 hours is not required!  However….just taking bits and pieces that you hear on PMSNBC, CNN (Clinton yes, still News Network), and the rest of the mainstream media is what you can expect!  Having an open mind…will go a very long way!  At least, take the time to listen to a 3 hour show while traveling or when you have the time.  Being a “Moonbat” is not always a bad thing!  My wife tells me that I am…..often!  However…..I am open-minded!   Give it a shot.  By the way, I grew up in a liberal family….then…..I grew up!  God Bless all of you!! (emphasis mine)

Again, I replied:

So Bill, if you grew up in a liberal family…then…you grew up; I suppose I grew up in a conservative family…then…I found the fountain of youth! Hah, I win.

But I’m guessing that both you and I are called Moonbats by our better halves because of our macho childishness. God bless you too.

Gregg

I then received another response, again to all 25 of us:

“The Moonbat’s” response is representative of the shallowmindedness that is prevelent in so many outspoken opionists today.

I’d suggest: Read the entire book before offering your outspoken analysis of the book after reading only the first chapter.

To which I replied:

Wow, that seems a bit harsh for my simple, tongue in cheek question (not to Rush, but to the author of the Challenge). If that’s all it takes for someone who may or may not disagree with you to be outspoken, I apologize wholeheartedly. Certainly no insult was intended.

Gregg (The Shallowminded Moonbat) Granger

To which the response was:

No apology necessary if no offense was intended. I must say though – does not this simple (yes friendly) exchange demonstrate how damaging comments (such as William Raspberry’s) can be – if taken literally as stated.

Sam – (lover of fact & truth)

Then Ralph, remember that Ralph started all of this, sent another, again to all 25:

Enough talk.

Are you willing to take the Rush Limbaugh 30 day challenge?

Are you close-minded, or are you worried that you might agree with him?

I listen to NPR to hear the Lefties…

Perhaps your opinion of Rush is based on what the media has said about him or maybe you heard a few short clips from his show.

Tune him in for 30 days.  Then either your disdain for him will be justified OR you just might become a fan!

My response this time was:

With all due respect, I am declining your offer.

I was walking through the mall one holiday season several years back and was approached by a young man who wanted me to take 5 minutes out of my afternoon to take the Pepsi Challenge. I refused, not out of animosity towards anybody’s sugar drink, but because I felt it would be a waste of time.

The same goes for your little Rush Challenge, only you’re talking about 60 or so hours. Where on earth do you find that kind of surplus time?

By the way, I don’t listen to Keith Olbermann either, not because I do or don’t disagree with him, but because of the anger with which he propounds his position. Life’s too short to sit around and listen to angry people all the time – don’t you agree?  I find too much time in the aura of anybody’s anger only serves to cast a dour attitude on me, and I’m worth more than that.

I am quite capable of formulating a perspective of the world without the input of angry opinion-spouting entertainers from any political persuasion.

Thanks for the offer all the same.

God’s blessings!

Gregg

Now, I want the reader to know that the names (except mine) have been changed to protect me from the innocent. Have a great day, and thanks for reading!

Just because you’re a great nobleman, you think you’re a great genius! Nobility, riches, a title, high positions, that all makes a man so proud! What have you done for such fortune? You went to the trouble of being born, and nothing else.
Pierre Beaumarchais from David McConnel, A Path Between the Seas

A Question of Values

The feeling grows in intensity over a period of six months, a sensation between a dull ache and numbness.  When I grab a knife in the kitchen or a steering wheel just so, the pain hones itself sharp, radiating toward and diminishing, as it nears the crotch of my elbow.

Of the physical and emotional discomforts I experience, of course my wrist is the easier operation; it’s only carpal tunnel.  But I know that.  Given the choice, I’ll carry physical discomfort over emotional baggage any day.

The doctor cautions I might, because of some obstacle, need full anesthesia; or I can skip the local altogether and start with the full.  Reaching this point in life with not unpleasant memories of recreational anesthesia, I choose the full approach.   I wake – sore, groggy, and refreshingly stoned – and Lorrie drives me home to lounge guilt-free on doctor’s orders until we both realize I’m taking advantage of the situation.

Drugs, cut, sort out the problem, stitch, and heal; that’s the process.  What I would give to have it so simple for the discomfort and numbness in my sense of direction, my sense of fit, and in those barely audible whispers of inadequacy, worthiness, and value as a human being.  I only progressed enough to experiment with an assortment of the available drugs of the day before settling comfortably into the legal side – alcohol and cigarettes.

What was I thinking?  My solution could never work.  Without cutting into the mix of emotions, sorting out the problems there, closing the wound and taking to heal?  How could I deceive myself into believing anesthesia alone possessed healing powers? They told me during my relatively successful rehabilitation for alcoholism that the drugs were talking.

The loafing of recovery gives me time to reflect.  It isn’t as if the surgery and the time off is costing money.  I struck out on that years earlier and have known long enough that I’m no financial wizard.  Time away from a job making no money costs nothing, and my self-employment, building seawalls and waterfront improvements, isn’t making money.

I never proved successful.  Sure, I graduated from college.  Never mind that was after several failed attempts and I was 35 years old.  I found college good, and two years later I received my master’s degree.  The eighteen years between high school and college graduations saw my success limited to taking a 1970 Triumph motorcycle around the country, marrying the best girl in the world, and starting our family with Emily’s birth in 1987.  Following college, my success was in growing our family with Amanda and Gregg II and accepting Christ’s promise.

My successes hinge on youth to manage a motorcycle tour, being introduced to the girl I would marry, an ability to shoot something more than blanks on three known occasions, and openness to Christ. None has much to do with me, and none fit the American definition of value.

I am gifted with my hands in a world where such giftedness is devalued.  I know what works and what doesn’t, and changes that enhance waterfront property, and those that don’t.  But I’m cursed with the honesty to tell customers in the hardware store I owned that this or that product is junk, and I refuse to build stupid things just because people think such things might work.  To survive in business you’ve got to sell stupid stuff, an act I found sufficiently distasteful to affect my performance.

The world is changing from a place where production of real goods and real services and real value are esteemed to a world where perceived value and brand are more important.  My perceived value and brand are similar lies; my bubble suffers the fate of Wall Street bubbles on sad days when only real value matters.  Producing real value requires physical attachment to the work.  How can the wholesale transfer of value from those who offer that physical attachment to brokers, financiers, marketers, advertisers, and organizers – those engaged in creating perceptions of value – not result in the destruction of moral values, family values, and community values?  It’s a dream to believe devaluing productive man doesn’t devalue man.

The idea of sailing around the world is the result of a confluence of ideas, but even then, a catalyst is required.

Summer, 2002 brings graduations, Father’s Day, Emily’s fifteenth birthday, Amanda’s eleventh, and my wrist surgery.  Somewhere in the mix comes the wedding.  My niece is getting married.  The ceremony is a good wedding and an expensive wedding, just like we’ve been told by people in the wedding perception industry that weddings are supposed to be.

The catalyst is the wedding.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the celebration, except the unearned pomp.  My whole life to this point is unearned pomp,  and maybe that’s why it affects me so much; either that or the lingering effects of the anesthesia earlier in the week.

As a parent, I think about my children, and their own weddings in the future.  God reveals my inability to provide that sort of holy matrimonial spectacle for my own kids; He’s given me other gifts to share with them, and uses my discomfort to get His message through.

I think of Jesus’ parable of the servants entrusted with talents, and thoughts ring louder and louder that the talents entrusted to me have the names Emily, Amanda, and Gregg II.

On my way home from the big event and in the company of my three-year-old son, Gregg II, who stays awake for the first couple minutes, I ponder the contradictions.  I beat myself up and take myself away from my children to build a business that provides for us, and to one day give them.  Considering my business history, this qualifies as my grandest self-deception.

Arriving home, I carry Greggii to bed – parents know the debate – do you wake him or carry him? Sleeping babies are easy, sleeping toddlers are manageable, but sleeping preschoolers are like a big bag of water.  Depending on how long they’ve been sleeping, chances are good that they are a big bag of water so the trip detours to the bathroom, and with a sleeping little boy, I’m just glad he hit the room; putting the seat up isn’t going to make a difference.

In the hour it takes me to drive home – Lorrie and the girls are driving separate because of their special wedding jobs – I have two inspirations from God.  The first is to stop taking myself away from my family, pretending to provide for them.  I’m not good at it and not getting ahead.  Even if I could get ahead, I would only have stupid stuff like the wedding to display that getting aheadedness.  What’s the point? The second is that it isn’t socially acceptable to drop out to take care of my family, so why not buy a boat and sail around the world? That isn’t socially acceptable either, but the reminders won’t be so constant.

After spending the past thirty minutes on this life-dream, I can’t wait to tell Lorrie.  When she gets home, we stand in the kitchen and I say, “I had a revelation.  I think we should sell everything and sail around the world.”  She gently strokes my forehead for fever, maybe from the drugs or surgery earlier in the week.  Everything I feel is shared except the excitement.  She thinks we should sleep on it.

Good strategy! We pray about it, and soon, she starts believing that what was first attributed to drugs is God’s plan for our lives.

We now have direction.  It’s no longer a maybe.  Within weeks, we watch people’s eyes roll when we tell them our plan.  The drugs and self-pity and frustration and rolling eyes need to take a seat on the sidelines, as God reveals what we are about.

I don’t need to know too much about sailing because God blows the winds, creates the currents, and makes the seas behave.  He’s brought us this far, and He won’t abandon us now.

I don’t have a clue when it comes to buying a boat, though.  I need help, and one day I walk into Anchorage Yacht Sales in Holland, Michigan.  I hear a warm baritone voice, “Hi there.  What can I do for you?” while soaking in my first yacht brokerage: two nautical charts hanging on the wall, two desks, two windows, a door, and the smell of burning coffee.  The only difference from any other kind of brokerage is the listings taped on the windows and the magazines on the desks.

My eyes find the source of the voice, Tom Rodenhouse, and I say, “Hi.  My wife and I want a boat to take our family sailing – around the world.”

“Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.” He turns into jolly old Saint Nick, “Who put you up to this?”

“N-n-nobody.  What are you talking about?”

“You’re serious? Nobody told you to come in here and say you’re going to go sailing around the world?”

“No.  What’s so funny?”

“Oh man, I’m sorry! I just got back from circumnavigating two years ago, and thought you, that someone told you to come in here and, come on now, tell the truth – are you sure nobody told you to come talk to me?”

“I just saw your sign, and here I am.”

“So, you’re going to sail around the world.  How many of you are there?”

“Five.”

In Tom, I find someone to help locate the right boat, and someone with knowledge of what we’re getting into.

I kick enough tires in Michigan to become aware of my ignorance, but I do learn a few things.  From the magazines, I see the lines and looks, but now I hear the creaks and groans, feel the joinery, and realize that every boat has a smell.  The smell of new boats is chemical – paint, fiberglass, woodshop, or cleaning solutions.  The smell of other boats can be anything: sewage, rotting wood, mildew, cooking grease, or just the stale smell of old air in a closed space.

I also learn that the Great Lakes don’t have the boat we need.

Tom lines up an agent in Annapolis to show a boat there.  This agent first shows me one at the dock, Antipodes of Sydney, before driving to the specific boat I came to see.  Once I see the layout, I know Antipodes is perfect.  I look at a number of others, but now have Antipodes from which to draw less than favorable comparisons.

Later, I learn the interior paneling isn’t teak, but nyatoh, another rich Asian wood.  The floor creaks, but less than the others.  The smell, not unpleasant, is of stale cooking grease, especially in the galley that serves as the corridor to the aft stateroom with its own head and a separate, stand-up shower.  A bow cabin with a single bunk is accessed through the starboard cabin that holds two bunks; a private port cabin has a double bunk; a large salon wraps around the companionway, with a navigation desk and bunk on the port side, opposite the galley.

I return the next weekend with Lorrie and Greggii.  While we make the decision to purchase Antipodes, a pep rally across the river for the opening home football game of the United States Naval Academy sends a fireworks show overhead.

As a family, we need to choose a name so she can be documented.  Antipodes is a good name, but it’s not ours.  We don’t hash around too many before settling on Faith.  Faith satisfies several criteria: it’s one syllable, easily pronounced and phonetically spelled for radio transmissions – Foxtrot-Alpha-India-Tango-Hotel – easy on the eyes, and we don’t know any other boats by that name.  Most of all, it reveals how God brought us to this point and is a constant reminder of our approach to this adventure.  Faith says it all.
We have a plan to depart in about a year, and to sail around the world in two.  All we must do is get ourselves and Faith ready for the trip.

There aren’t many people saying, “Wow, that’s really something, go for it!” There really aren’t many people who think we’ll be going far at all.  I hear my father has been telling people that, given my history, he doesn’t expect us to get past the Caribbean before quitting.

The most telling story comes while sitting at anchor in St. Lucia after our Atlantic crossing, the final passage that marks our circumnavigation.  Rich and Samantha approached in their dinghy and asked, “Did Faith used to be Antipodes? Do you recognize us?”

“Hi.  Yeah, you were the captain and mate on Antipodes when we bought her.”
“People asked us whatever became of her.  What have you been doing with her?”
“Our stop here marks the completion of our circumnavigation of the world, just like we said we were going to do when we bought her.”

Sam said, “Nobody ever believes that.  People always say they’re going to sail around the world, but nobody ever does.”

We find, while preparing for our voyage in Hampton, Virginia, a number of folks planning voyages of their own and a few who have actually left the dock.  The planners are dreamers, conjuring obstacles to maintain the dream.  As soon as the boat is all ready; boats are boats, and will never be all ready.  As soon as they have accumulated enough money; there will never be enough.  As soon as the kids are older, or the kids have moved out, or …

I recall a man I worked with years earlier who refused a sizeable Christmas bonus.  “I always wanted a Cadillac,” he said, “but as soon as I get my Cadillac, the dream is gone.  I just think the car can’t be as good as the dream.”

People know when they leave the dock, the dream is gone.

Regarding our experience, even we admit it’s a valid concern.  Not many people upgrade from a sixteen foot Hobie Cat on Gun Lake, Michigan to a fifty-six foot monohull on the blue waters of three oceans.  For us though, the prize is making this journey as a family, and precludes any normal progression toward that level of competence.

I always ask, “So, how do you think we should go about getting experience?”

“You’ve got to sail,” comes the reply, and I shrug that off the list of concerns.  If nothing else happens, we are going to sail.

The other concern that people express is about our itinerary.  A recurring theme surfaces:

“You’re going to a lot of places where they don’t value human life like we do.”
Nobody, least of all me, with my conservative Republican roots, my Reformed religion, and my resistance to change, could foresee the unintended truth of that statement.

We will learn that where joy is concerned, more is less.  The farther we travel into worlds where less stuff drives people’s lives, the more joy there is.

We will also learn that fear of the world makes us prisoners of our borders, and we will grow a healthy suspicion of the proponents of that fear.

This is our story.

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There’s a menacing building just behind our house; it’s kind of the neighborhood ‘no-go-zone’ because of all the scary things in there. You see, this building is my garage. I pretended to clean it last year, and was able to park my car in it for the better part of a week. I didn’t really clean it, I just shuffled the stuff around.

Boy do I ever have a load of stuff in there – every bit of it just good enough to not throw it away – not much of it anything that I can ever conceive of using again, but…you never know.

Emily and I built a tennis ball catapult for a class project one year – it still works, and I again shuffled that bit of memorabilia around.

Gregg II carved me a sign that says ‘World’s best dad’ and I shuffled that too.

I haven’t uncovered any of Amanda’s treasures yet, but cleaning the garage is not a one-day project. I will certainly shuffle many more memories before the job is done.

I have become more liberal in the items I do choose to throw away. Just how many times should I look at a bent screwdriver, one that’s been bent through three or four of these exercises, before I finally throw it out?

Maybe it’s my passion for tools. I don’t care how rusty, and those that accompanied us for four and a half years at sea are rusty, if they still look like they might function, I must keep them. Today, I tried a novel way of cleaning them: I ran them through the dishwasher. It worked.

Cleaning the garage isn’t just shuffling, it also involves getting things to work to make them worth saving.

The legs rusted off our Weber grill, the rest of which works just fine, so I stacked up a bunch of bricks to hold the business end of that grill and threw the framework away.

I fixed two flat tires, one on Emily’s bicycle, and one on mine.

When we returned home from Faith, I brought most of the spare hardware and repair materials home. I’m probable the only guy in the whole neighborhood with a marine toilet in pieces in his garage.

By dusk, I was able to walk through the garage without lifting my feet over this item or that, and that makes today’s work an accomplishment. I look forward to that time when I will again be able to park my car in there for a couple of days.

In the brisk evening of December 16, 1773, a number of yahoos fueled with rage toward the government-sanctioned corporate control over their lives by the East India Company, and perhaps fueled in no small part by Sam Adams, dumped that company’s cargo of tea into the Boston Harbor.

King George was heavily invested in the East India Company and awarded the company a monopoly on trade with the colonies. He also gave the company the authority to collect Britain’s taxes on that trade.

While none of colonists at this time seriously considered themselves anything but British subjects, this act did lead to the Revolutionary War from which the United States emerged – free of government-sanctioned corporate control of its citizens’ lives.

What happened?

Oh, we were fine for the first hundred years or so – until the Civil War tore the substance out of ‘States Rights’ to consolidate a powerful central government in Washington (yes, the road is paved with good intentions).

Within decades, that central government began a massive redistribution of this country’s wealth when it took property owned by all citizens and almost unconditionally gave it to the corporations building the railroads.

Since that time, Washington has been tripping over itself in its race to give away the commons and to restore the corporate control that the East India Company once enjoyed.

Government-sanctioned monopolies now exist in health insurance, communications, internet service and defense contracting, to name a few.

King George awarded the East India Company uncontested contracts in the same manner that Dick Cheney’s frontman awarded Halliburton (in which Dick Cheney is heavily invested) uncontested contracts.

When an individual murders another, he faces prison – unless that individual happens to be one of the Supreme Court’s newly recognized corporations-with-personhood rights, say BP or Massey for example, who enjoy a cap on liabilities, without the inconvenience of prison.

If I ask for a cap on my liabilities for health-care, I’m branded a socialist; it seems such legal limits on liability are available only for our corporations.

And while it’s fashionable to blame those selfish bastards in Washington and on Wall Street for this repeat of history, we sit and grumble about unimportant things and let them steal the country the tea-partiers (in 1773) fought for.

My marketing plan for my book is to speak to as many groups and individuals as possible about our family’s journey. My wife and I have been busy scheduling as many groups as we can to present our story to. Last week, we scheduled upcoming talks at seven different Rotary International Chapters in Michigan.

This morning, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of 50 to 100 people (I’ve never been good at estimating numbers of people) at the church in which I grew up: Mt. Hope United Methodist Church, in Lansing, Michigan. The following is how I began my presentation:

In November, 2003, my wife Lorrie, my five year old son, Gregg II, and twelve and sixteen year old daughters, Amanda and Emily, embarked on a two year journey on a sailboat, to sail around the world. Those two years lasted four and a half years.

The story I’m going to tell you is about the world we experienced, beautiful and full of wonder, and in stark contrast to the world we think we know.

And with those few lines, I began a new chapter in my life this morning in public speaking about our journey around the world on a sailboat.

The following is an excerpt from the afterword in Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home.

In four years and a half of traveling the globe, we found no strangers. We found people everywhere engaged in life, in love, in vocation, and in worship.

Curiosities abounded, but rather than focus on the curiosities of others, we gained a perspective allowing us to see our own cultural curiosities. In residential architecture, homes are designed to isolate parents from children – an American curiosity. As a nation, we have determined that corporations as legal entities, possess the human right to free speech – an American curiosity. We consume far more than this planet is capable of supporting; we are quick to sue each other; we profess love for our freedoms while we allow the erosion of those freedoms in the name of security – American curiosities all.

We embrace the notion of rugged individuals, and flee from social responsibilities aimed at assisting those not sufficiently rugged.

Another American curiosity was brought to our attention from people in every place we visited where it became a topic of discussion. “The Constitution of the United States of America is the greatest document ever written” (sometimes qualified by “except the Bible,” or “except the Koran”). People everywhere aspire to the ideals held forth in that document, and surprisingly, people everywhere seem to have a better understanding of that document than we do.

Just as a first date provides only so much knowledge to want or not want to learn more, so too it is in our travels.

America, my motherland by birth, can never be a first date, and the depth of that relationship holds insights into wonderful characteristics and flaws gained only in a familial relationship. I cannot undo the knowledge of here any more than I can gain a similar knowledge of any of the other places we visited.

It would be pleasant to say we went in search of the world and we found it, but it would be an exaggeration. It is impossible, as outsiders and as amateurs, to gain a solid understanding of the cultures we experienced. Perhaps this account attributes a higher degree of goodness to people of other cultures than is warranted. I make no apology for that, as interests far more powerful than I work endlessly to vilify these same people.

If my small voice can cause only a flicker of doubt of the reams of misinformation of the black deeds and darkness surrounding those unfortunates born outside our borders, I will call it success.

Certainly the creation we experienced has been stained by evil, in the same sense that my own heart has.

Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, 247 pages plus 20 pages of full color photographs.

I, for one, am growing tired of listening to the endless yammering on by those engaged in the shrimp and oyster fisheries along the Gulf Coast. It’s like, “oh, poor us, we stand likely to lose our livelihoods because of this crude substance heading our way.” For crying out loud, get over it! BP stands to lose a whole lot more than you guys, and we as a society have determined they are more important. Further, BP spent $16,000,000 on Washington influence last year, and if you oystermen can’t say the same, then what voice do you honestly expect to have now?

Did we really need to come to this? After all, we’re America; we’re the greatest of God’s creation, in the greatest empire ever built. But now, here we sit – a bunch of simpering, bleeding-heart environmentalists, pretending we give a hoot about river otters, mink, and a bunch of different kinds of seabirds threatened by a black ooze  emanating from the ocean floor. Get a grip, man! That ooze is oil! It’s the stuff that put Buddy Ebsen on the map, and for crying out loud, it’s the stuff money’s made of, and we all know, there’s far too little of that moving around these days.

Oh, sure, we can pretend to care about those critters, and how cutesy and loveable they are – but the real issue to concern ourselves with is how we can maintain our devotion to corporate profits while carrying on this annoying charade.

Eleven people were martyred for the sake of corporate profits when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, and none of this feel-good talk about the environmental impact of the greatest spill in history can honor their cause. We need to get to work on a real solution to put this oil back into the hands of its rightful owner – no, not the American citizen who owned it before the auction – British Petroleum, or BP is hurting on this one, and while we-all are pussyfooting around pelicans, here’s a real, red-blooded corporation among us with a big hole in the pocket.

It’s time we jump in behind our oil companies, especially BP at the present, just as we support our Airlines, our Banks, our Automobiles, and our Health Insurers, to maintain the funneling of enormous public resources into their balance sheets.

Photo: Liz Condo/Associated Press

In 2008, my family returned from 4 1/2 years of circumnavigating the world on a sailboat. My book on that journey, and the relationships we continue to experience, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is now available for $19.99 plus 5.00 shipping and handling:

This post is an excerpt from my book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home

Per citizen, the United States spends more than half again as much as any other country in the world on healthcare, yet maintains outcomes in the lowest third of the top fifty industrialized nations, according to the World Health Organization. Perhaps this can be explained by the extraordinary influence we have conferred on our corporations in the shaping of public policy, or perhaps this stems from America’s concept of the rugged-individual and the notion that those not sufficiently rugged possess a lesser claim to personhood and human rights.

Lorrie urges me to have a medical checkup before leaving Thailand.

The dentist is first, refilling and repairing a filling and a cracked tooth, scaling, cleaning, and polishing all my teeth, and providing the overall assessment that my teeth are still there. Monday morning begins a complete health check-up consisting of a chest x-ray, an organ ultrasound, some lab work, a treadmill-stress test, and a consultation with a physician after lunch, when all the test results are in. It’s a fascinating concept in medical care, starting when I arrive shortly before nine, without an appointment – you don’t need appointments in Thailand. I’m handed a medical menu about the size of a large postcard listing the services offered from lab work to full-scale MRI, and the prices of each with little check-boxes next to them where I indicate which services I desire.

Then, in an act defying the logic of what we knew was the best healthcare in the world before we left the US, the receptionist hands me a folder to carry around. It’s incredible that, here in Thailand, they trust me with my records. I’m escorted to another desk where the woman places an order for a chest x-ray in my folder and shows me to radiology. Ten minutes later, I leave radiology with a full-size x-ray dwarfing my folder, and I’m taken to the lab to pee in a cup and donate blood. Next, I’m wired up and jogging on a treadmill. A little before noon, I’m told to get some lunch and return at 12:30 for an interview with the doctor, who has all my information electronically in front of him, but who also looks inside my folder during our talk.

It starts at 9:00am and it’s over by 2:00pm; I walk out of the hospital with a complete report in my hands except for a couple things in either the urine or blood that they’ll email me. I have a clean bill of health.

The costs: Dental, US$60.00, Physical, US$250.00.

What is it with eyes?
I cannot believe I alone possess this fascination .

Eyes radiate the life of a simmering campfire,
penetrating and hypnotizing.
They inform us of pains,
or joys,
likely both and more.
Fears, mostly of others, and what we find ourselves capable of as a consequence of fear.
Angers possessed past expiration,
Tomorrow’s anxieties, arriving early, compound today’s,
Feelings fade or we die,

Was I unwise, to keep them open for so long? (Jackson Brown)

Love endures, also projected through eyes!
and the Word.
And God saw (presumably with His eyes) that it was good.
Hearts feel, minds choose to love or not,
eyes tattle on each.