As
some of you might know, in this transitional stage of concluding my twenty year
ministry here in Stoughton (and my thirty-three year career in the Unitarian
Universalist ministry generally), I have taken a job as a First Mate on board a
duck boat. In addition to my work as your minister, I am currently also
employed by Super Tours of Boston, and a few days a week, I can be found cruising
the streets of Boston or sailing in the Inner Harbor, sharing my “vast”
historical knowledge with people from far flung corners of the globe and from
all fifty U.S. states.
I
have really enjoyed this work thus far. Finding a tour company that would let
me talk, without having to drive around the city in a great big tour bus was a
godsend. I enjoy being in the city, savoring its sights and sounds and
atmosphere. My co-workers are an interesting and friendly group. It has been wonderful to get to meet visitors
from so many different places.
And
most of all, I get to talk about history,
almost all day, several days a week.
I
get to tell the story of that dynamic and multi-faceted place we call Boston,
from the native peoples who settled the Mishawum and Shawmut peninsulas, to the
Puritans and the Sons of Liberty and the waves of immigrants who each
transformed the city in their wake. There are many people and places—and
stories—along the way, whether on land or on sea. Some of these I had already
heard about and known of before starting this job (I was a trolley driver back
in the 1990s, some of you might remember): the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere;
the Brinks Job; the Great Molasses Flood (to bring you just to the fringes of
the North End).
But
I have never kidded myself that I knew everything
about anything; so some of the
stories I now tell are new to me. None of them more interesting, and
enlightening, and inspiring than the story of the Flying Cloud.
The
Flying Cloud was built by Donald
McKay at his shipyard in East Boston, and launched in the spring of 1851. McKay
was born in Nova Scotia in 1810, moved to Boston as a young man, and eventually
became one of the most successful ship builders in America. (There’s even a
monument to him at Castle Island, where Boston’s Inner Harbor and Outer Harbor
meet).
The
Flying Cloud was to be McKay’s
crowning achievement, built as an extreme clipper, the fastest boats to sail
back in the 19th century. Gold had been discovered at Sutter’s Creek
in 1848, and soon the Gold Rush—the mad dash to get to California as fast as
possible to search for riches—was on. But
the journey from the East Coast to the West was a long and arduous one:
The first
transcontinental railroad was still almost twenty years away. Trips by wagon
train were dangerous, and it could take well neigh a year to reach California.
Most critically (for voyages by sea), there was no Panama Canal (yet). So that
meant if you wanted to go from New York to San Francisco, you had to sail down
the coast of South America; around Cape Horn; then back up the coast of South
America; up the Pacific Coast of Mexico; then, finally, to California.
It took even the
fastest ships in the early 19th century six months or more to make
that voyage—too slow for those who craved the chance to search for gold out
west. McKay’s extreme clippers would attempt to shorten that time
substantially. So hopes were high as the Flying
Cloud set sail from New York on its maiden voyage, bound for San Francisco,
on June 1, 1851.
Eighty-nine days
and 20 hours later, amidst fanfare and celebrations and headlines in the
national press, the Flying Cloud arrived
in San Francisco harbor. A new sailing record had been set, nearly cutting by
50% the time it took to get from coast to coast. (Two years later, in 1853, the
Flying Cloud would beat its own
record by 13 hours—a record that would stand for over 135 years, until 1989.)
The captain on
the Flying Cloud was Josiah Perkins
Creesy, one of the most famous Yankee Clipper commanders of his day. His
navigator (here’s where the story gets really interesting) was his wife, Eleanor—the daughter of a sea
captain from Marblehead, Massachusetts, who had studied sailing and navigation
at her daddy’s knee, so to speak.
It would be an
understatement to say that it was unusual to have had a women as part of the
crew on board a sailing vessel back in the mid-19th century-- much
less in an important position like navigator. It wasn’t just unusual; it was
unheard of! The crew, we can imagine, wasn’t too pleased. I’m sure that
officials at the shipping company that owned the ship had their qualms, as
well. Indeed, among more superstitious souls at the time (of whom there were
many), it would have been considered bad luck to have had a woman on board the
ship at all!
But Eleanor
proved her stuff. Because of increasingly overcast skies as the ship headed
south, she had no stars above her by which to navigate. Her instruments were
rendered worthless. She had to rely on a process known as dead reckoning to determine where the ship was, and where it was
headed. Dead reckoning (or deduced reckoning, as it sometimes called) entails using a previously determined position, or fix, and advancing that position based upon
known or estimated speeds over a period of elapsed time and course. Modern
navigational aids—most particularly satellite global positioning, or GPS, have
rendered the use of dead reckoning obsolete. But it was all that Eleanor Creesy
and the Flying Cloud had to rely on. When
she predicted that they would reach the Straits of Magellan within hours of
when they actually did, her reputation in the annals of navigation was secure.
But not only was Eleanor Creesy a great navigator; she ranks
as a great pathfinder as well: a shining example of the achievements women and
men are capable of—when they follow their callings; are true to their deepest
natures; dare to sail pathless and wild seas, and set out into uncharted waters
on the next stage of their lives’ journeys.
As it is true with individuals, so it can be with churches,
as well.
We have all just about reached now the point our own great
transition, you and I: that point at which this common journey we have shared
as minister and congregation will separate, and we will go our separate ways,
on separate journeys. There are just three more Sundays now in our ministry
together (counting this one). By August 1, you will have a new interim minister
at the helm. (Is the minister, in our tradition, the captain of the ship, or is
he or she the navigator, or the steward, perhaps? That’s a question worth
pondering as you move forward. I’m not sure what the best answer is. But think
about it.)
Ccertainly, at this point in the journey, we’ve all got some
interesting and challenging sailing to do, and we are both, you and I, in
largely uncharted waters.
We know that in the realm of these day to day lives we lead,
there is no such thing as an infallible GPS. Of course, there are the deepest
values we hold, the deepest faith to which we cling. I know that, for me, and
for some of us, the “G” in my GPS is God,
and that, if I am true to my faith and my calling to glorify my Creator and
serve His creation, that, in the end, in the big picture, “when the roll is
called up yonder”, as they say, all will be well.
For this church, too, if you remain true to your Unitarian
Universalist values—including and especially, perhaps, the affirmation of the
inherent worth and dignity of every man, woman, and child, and respect for the
interdependent web of existence of which we are part—then you, too, will come
‘round to where you ought to be and end up just right, and redeem the important
mission that this little church holds along the religious landscape of our
community.
But even though we remain people of faith, the pathway of
change can be challenging and intimidating and even frightening. That “big
picture” GPS, that I do truly believe we each have deep within ourselves,
guarantees nothing of ease or comfort or earthly success on these paths of
everyday we trod (or sail) year in and year out.
Even the glorious Flying Cloud, which continued to have an
illustrious sailing career even after the Creesys went elsewhere and retired
from the sea, eventually (in 1874) went aground on a sandbar off the coast of
St. John, New Brunswick, and was scuttled and condemned and sold off, piece by
piece, as scrap copper and iron.
There is no guarantee of earthly success (or institutional
success) for me or for this church. We don’t know what the future holds in that
realm.
But would you have had Eleanor Creesy stay at home, baking biscuits
and sipping tea and tending her garden in Marblehead, when she had so many seas
yet to sail?
Much more dangerous to our souls, I think, than setting out
into new and uncharted seas is to remain holed up in the old familiar waters,
even though they have grown stale and stagnant. Even worse than dashing against the rocks on
the way to new ports of call is to stay at home and stagnate and rust and die.
To move the metaphor inland, a grave is the same as a rut, only deeper.
No, however sheltered this port may seem, and however
hospitable it has been, we cannot anchor here any longer. It is time to hoist
the mast and sail those pathless and wild seas.
We can rely on the instruments we have to set our course. We
can use the navigational charts drawn up by those who have sailed these same
seas before us. The library, and the marketplace, and the internet are full of
would-be guides to help us on our journey. We would be foolish not to seek help
when we need it, when the opportunity presents itself.
But sometimes, the stars above that guide us are obscured by
clouds of doubt and uncertainty and confusion and complication, so we have to
rely on our own dead reckoning, rather than on charts drawn up by others.
We have to look back to where we have sailed so far. We each
have a history—a story—which has important lessons of discernment to teach us,
if we pay attention to it and take it seriously. Those who don’t study history
are doomed to repeat it, they say. Those who do study history are doomed (or
blessed) to be tour guides in Boston, perhaps.
But our lives largely are a product of the decisions we have
made, good and bad, and both have so much to tell us. It is no accident that
the most important maxim of the ancient Greeks was “Know thyself”, for in the answer to that riddle lies a pearl of
great price indeed.
As we undertake the process of dead reckoning in these lives
of ours, we need an accurate appraisal of where, exactly, we are—if we’re ever
going to know where we’re headed.
Then, as we reckon, there is a need for us to be almost
brutally honest with ourselves, if we’re going to stay on path. I’m sure you’ve
heard the computer aphorism, “Garbage in, garbage out.” So it is for these
reckoning brains of ours (the brain was really the first personal computer, you
know, and it’s still the most important, at least for now). If, as we proceed
on our journeys, the data we use is full of wishful or magical thinking, or is
inaccurate or questionable, or is just plain garbage—then don’t be surprised if
you end up stuck in the middle of the ocean, rather than at the Straits of
Magellan.
And finally, here’s one more piece of navigational advice
that I’ve learned from the various duck boat captains I‘ve sailed with in
recent days: don’t steer toward the
rocks.
It continues to amaze me what breathtakingly stupid things
people have done (and continue to do) down through the ages. I like to think that,
in my own life, I’ve avoided most (if not all) of the Really Big Mistakes that
have, from earliest times, landed people in hot water time and again. But I
have had enough little screw ups of my own over the past 58 ¾ years to keep me
humble. As have we all (or most of us, at least). Many of these rocks I found
myself cast up upon were avoidable, had I engaged my brain, my critical
thinking, my God-given powers of reason and common sense (and sometimes, had I
disengaged my tongue, which gets even the most even-tempered of us in trouble
so very often).
But it’s a journey, isn’t it? This journey we make through
life is often difficult and seldom predictable, and that’s the way it is
supposed to be. For in the greatest challenges lie the greatest rewards, and in
the greatest mysteries lie encoded the biggest surprises. It is wonder and
surprise and the joy of new discoveries that make this life worth living. For
that is how we know
…the universe itself as
a road—
As many roads—
As roads for traveling
souls.
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