I'm bringing my Bermuda cruise post back to the front because of an addition to the end of it. I want to ask a favor of the reader. Because of the embarrassing nature of the follow-up, please do not pass this post on to friends or relatives, or promote it in any way, and please do not print it and hang it up at work or any such thing!
Bermuda......On The Periphery
I'm writing this from the promenade deck of Royal Caribbean's Grandeur Of The Seas cruise ship. We are a couple hundred miles off of the Virginia coast on our return from the beautiful and almost idyllic country of Bermuda. This is my favorite deck, the starboard and port sides of which hang the lifeboats, but it's not my favorite for that reason, rather it's the starboard side, stern to bow, where I can light up my pipe and look out upon this great expanse of water.
I can picture a young John Kennedy impressing the ladies with his charm and good looks as he heads to England with his family on one of the great ocean liners of his day. I can imagine Winston Churchill sitting on a wooden deck very much like this one, peering through the same iron rails off onto the salty brine that was home to his Royal Navy. Surely it must have been the same view...the same feeling of floating on top of what may be the most powerful force on earth. I try to put myself back to the days prior to World War II but can't see their world without knowing what was ahead of them, but then again I can experience what must have been Winston Churchill's concerns about perilous times and dangers ahead, even much more than he could imagine.
Bermuda itself has an aesthetically pleasing culture and all of the many Bermudians we met were so very friendly, even going above and beyond. As my wife and I were trekking under the hot sun along the road to a beach an elderly couple stopped their automobile and insisted that we hop in and let them take us the rest of the way.
This relatively flat island nation of only 64,000 people on 20 square miles must import 98% of everything that they need. There is no natural water source and the white roofs over the beautiful pastel colored homes directs the rainfall for collection and use. They have one diesel fueled power plant to supple all of their electricity, and if you plan on moving to Bermuda to work you might want to think again for Bermudians are almost wholly favored for employment.
Against the advice of almost everyone that we talked to we rented a Moped. I had only been on one once, thirty years ago, on a similar cruise to Jamaica. When we pulled out of the rental station I felt like Gregory Peck with Audrey Hepburn on the back in Roman Holiday but once we were out on the narrow winding, often wall enclosed roads with Bermudians in cars and buses going about their daily duties with familiarity I felt more like Steve McQueen trying to stay ahead of the fast approaching German prison guards in The Great Escape. I prayed most of the ride, constantly going over in my mind on which brake the instructor taught me, in the thirty second training course, to use and which one he instructed me not to use under any circumstances, and all of this while driving on the wrong side of the road! My wife literally screamed twice. As for me it was a great acting job to calm her down, similar to George Clooney calming Sandra Bullock down in Gravity.
We met so many people and the conversations were very enjoyable. I had great difficulty getting into serious discussions about the world that we live in but I did have one lead-in for a serious talk. After returning from an excursion I sat on the bed in our stateroom and turned on the television. That classic 1953 film Titanic had just started and I planned on watching it. Early on, in the middle of a serious scene where Barbara Stanwyck's character was in tears discussing with Clifton Webb's character their soon to be divorce, the screen went blank for a few moments and a Bob Hope comedy started in its place! I couldn't help but wonder if a member of the crew spotted the cable channel's offering about the sinking of the Titanic and hurriedly somehow switched the programming.
I brought this up at the dinner table and focused on the story of the Titanic. Those people were sitting around dinner tables just like we were, being waited on hand and foot by a very professional staff of shipboard waiters, talking about the same incidentals of life that we were talking about. Life was exciting to them on their transatlantic voyage as it was to us on our luxurious cruise to Bermuda.....until the Titanic brushed the ragged subsurface of the iceberg, then life changed for everyone. I followed this concept up with the great film Mrs. Miniver where Greer Garson's character lived a privileged life life in a beautiful English home on the Thames River outside of London. She was preoccupied with the purchase of a Sunday hat that she desperately wanted. Walter Pidgeon's character of her husband was equally preoccupied with the purchase of a new sporty automobile. Their children had wonderful prospects for the future....once again... only until England was forced to enter the war. I mentioned two very different church services from the film, one in the beginning where the family was thinking about anything but God and the other at the end where, under the blue sky visible through the bombed out roof of the church, everyone gave rapt attention to their Creator. They now knew that the God who could sustain them as a nation could also lift His protective hand from them. I received no response from our friends at the table and the conversation soon returned to the cruise.
At breakfast and lunch you are seated with someone new every meal and on our last day we met a conservative Presbyterian couple just like us and two very nice ladies from London. We talked about everything from films, to conservative and liberal politics, to health care, to religion. There was a lot of laughter and I think that we four Americans and two British ladies learned a lot about each other's countries.
While in Bermuda we took an excursion on a small ferry. A young man, a Bermudian of course, gave us an excellent tour through the passageway from where our ship was docked to their largest city of Hamilton. He was very personable and we had an opportunity to talk. I wanted him to walk away from our conversation knowing that we in America are two very distinct peoples, hardly related to one another any more, for our bonding together as Americans is gone, as one side has a very reductionist and revisionist view of American history and almost total ignorance of our Constitution and the importance of it. I wanted this young man to know this as he watched the news or read the newspapers for he will get little if any insight into the American people from the international media. If our republic falls, which it is in the process of doing, because of the greed of numerous special interest groups to secure benefits, handouts and entitlements in exchange for their political support and oblivious to others using them as dupes, and because we have forgotten God, then every honest individual loses and every country eventually falls to totalitarianism.
We also met an artist, very accomplished and respected in her work, and we spent over an hour looking at her paintings eventually purchasing a beautiful giclee print of a typical Bermudian city dwelling with an old man and two children in it. This young female artist described her work to the people stopping by and did so always as it related to the majesty of the God who designed and created everything. Our very small collection of paintings in our dining room are all by artists that we have personally met and it is a special joy to look at a painting in our home and think about the artist who created it, my own mother being one of them.
So I did have some conversations that included God but for me it was peripheral. I was edified by this young lady but I myself edified no one. It was no surprise that I had difficulty praying on the cruise with all the sights and wonders and activities. Without the Internet, newspapers or radio there was no war, no crises, almost no reality and if one is not careful....no God. So in one way I was greatly weakened by the pleasure trip but I did receive a stark reminder, a blessing in disguise, of my own past, of what it was like being only on the periphery of God. Here I was with the wonders of God's creation all around me but my thoughts rarely went to Him. I admired the beauty of creation without considering the majesty of the Creator! It's different here at home, without the distractions, where I can see a marvelously green lawn and thank God for giving beautiful colors to His world and I can smell the freshly cut grass and let it offer up praises to Him.
I need reminded often, even daily, of where I once was.... lost....oblivious to God....looking to the baubles of this world as if they were of priceless value....and all the while as I was perishing. I need it for myself and also to help me keep in perspective where others are who do not know Christ. It's not an easy choice for them for they are as tropical fish swimming in the murky water of an ignored aquarium, unable to see outside the glass or even what is in front of them. Only the Holy Spirit can give life to the sea of peoples with no vision and no concerns other than that of a secular life and beautiful world that merely evolved.
I was where they are and would be there today, if I had even survived, had not God intervened. I know I will think often of Bermuda and pray, for that young man who gave us a guided tour, for the friendly people, for the fellow passengers and crew who we came to know and like, and I'll pray at that time for the mercies granted to one such as I to be granted to many of them. I'll think of that young Christian artist as I admire her work and thank God for way-tokens and encouragements and lessons, for weaknesses that can be prisms for His light and for His strength to press on....and to press on...and to press on.
addendum:
I took a lot of digital pictures while on the cruise... of the many decks that you could stroll upon, and the pools, our stateroom and a lot of the wonderful entertainment. On shore I took pictures of the beautiful pastel colored homes dotting the landscape and also now had evidence to show of the bluest waters that I had ever seen. There were also photographs of the friends we made including the waiters who were with us all week. In short, it would have been a visual reminder of a luxurious cruise to Bermuda.
I write 'would have been' for a funny thing happened on my way to the Grove City Outlets which is about an hour drive from our home. I stopped at a rest area on Rt. 79 about two miles before the exit to the outlets. There was an empty bag and wrappings from a couple of hot dogs on the seat of the car, along with some incidentals I had brought along. Among the 'incidentals' was the memory card of my camera for I had every intention of stopping to get the pictures developed. Well, it appears that as I gathered up the papers to throw away I also picked up the Ziploc bag that had the memory card in it.
I didn't discover that it was missing until this morning. After church I drove all the way back up Rt. 79 to the rest area. The garbage container that I threw everything away in was empty so I talked to the attendant and he kindly led me to a dumpster. Just then a downpour began. I started to pull out the clear garbage bags to see if I could spot the white paper bag inside.....no luck....so I climbed into the dumpster, with my church clothes on, and literally waded knee deep in the bags and bottles and cans and watermelon rinds and...well everything else. I did not find the bag I threw away the day before or my camera's memory card.
I was concerned most for my wife who would be very disappointed but a thought then came to me. We'll always have memories but what is left that is tangible are the necklace and the bracelet of sea glass that I bought for my wife, for her birthday was in the middle of the cruise, and the stunningly vibrant painting we purchased from the artist who, as I wrote above, described the subjects of her work to everyone who stopped in "as (they) related to the majesty of God who designed and created everything."
That which is lasting remains and only that which was fleeting is gone.
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Political Thought and the Christian
