For the past five days I, along with the rest of the Kaleo group, have been sailing out on the Pacific Ocean. We went with an organization called S.A.L.T.S. based out of Victoria. The best way I can describe the boat is that it's much like a pirate ship. It's a wooden boat big enough for thirty-five plus people with numerous sails and a burly british captain. Part of the experience of being on the trip is being part of the crew. So all of us had to do our part in scrubbing the deck, hoisting sails, staying up on night watch and so forth. The experience of the ship was quite something in itself. However, another significant part of the trip, that I was not expecting, was that the crew members were all Christians. It was exciting to be able to worship and fellowship with them throughout the week. The worship was one of my favorite things about the trip. We would all gather and sing songs out of a book of oddly complialed tunes. We sang traditional hymns and contemporary choruses right along with The Beatles and John Denver. Not to mention the occosional sea barring tune with the skipper in the background on his Irish flute. As a worship leader, it changed and encouraged my perspective. I believe and have believed that worship is not the act of singing hymns and chorus. It's a state of mind and heart. It's how and why we live for God. And if a bunch of people in the middle of "worship" can find honest joy and fellowship in the bottom of a boat singing Let It Be. Then let it be.
The topic of worship has been on my mind a lot latley. The other day one of the Kaleo leaders asked myself and one other student if we would be interested in leading a monday night worship gathering. It's an open-ended opportunity for all of the students to figure out ways to worship God. I think something I'm going to encourage for that time is that we stay away from singing as much as possible. Simply to step away from the falsity that worship is about singing to God. The ideas are already begining to flood in. I'm excited to see where this goes.
Today is a day of recovery. It's a day to sleep. It's a day to finish neglected homeowork. It's a day to be with people. It's a day to shake off the left-over rocking sensation from a week at sea. It's a solid day.
4 comments:
eric! your blog brought a tear to my eye. i'm so excited for you to be able to experience all of this stuff. when do you have class if you're out on the open seas? did you see any whales?
A pirate ship?! That sounds mighty exciting, eric johnson. I've seen a few different styles of worship here, too. The church we went to yesterday has a youth miming group - it was amazing. I was moved by the silence and emotion.
- Lauren
thanks, grimes. i'm excited to be doing this too. we didn't have class on the open seas. we take classes one at a time which allows us to do exciting things like sailing in between. next week we're going on a surf trip for three days. i'm looking forward to it. i didn't see any whales while we were on the ship. but i did see seals and a sea-lion. i also saw some kind of dolphin-like animal. i saw some killer whales from the camp though a couple weeks ago. that was cool.
yes lauren poppen, a pirate ship. some people dressed up. i thought of you and i was certain in my thoughts that you would have dressed up if you were there.
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