Sailing

I am a sailor. Not one of those ancient sailors, who roamed the sevens seas with death and glory as their followers, but just a normal seaman with a small vessel. We do a little competition in it, and then we go on summer holiday, me and the smallish family.

Yesterday was a very cool, but rough day. I ventured over a small strait called Kattegat, and in my 23 footer, it was a bit of a rough ride with waves as tall as my eyesight, and a bit bobbing up and dawn. It made me think though.

When you sail, especially in a small boat, and the riding is rough, you feel the wrath of nature. If you happen to fall over the boat, and that is pretty much an option, you will die a slow death of cooling down.

So you sit there with your life in your own hands, and if you do not control your boat, you will die.

This is a lesson that has been lost on us after we left the boats. The wrath of the ocean, the smallishness of our being. It brings a certain humility to be cast from here to there, and you start to feel the pain in your arm from tearing at the steering wheel over and over again, as you surf up and down the waves.

When you are out there on the sea, you really long for home. But to get there you have to be patient. There are no easy fixes, no fast tracking, no cheating. You have to look at your gear, and just get on with it.

When your gear starts chipping out, my gps had too little battery and started chipping out, you realize, that you were not suffiently prepared. There is no way of getting extra batteries in the middle of the ocean, and when the waves are two meters high, and you can only see your destination sometimes, you wish you had remembered the batteries.

But most important, when you are in a middle of a storm, you need to think clearly, not lose your aim, keep your head clear, not panic. Because if you start panicking, you lose, and then you are dead.

When I reached my destination, I could not take the sail down, because the wind and the waves were too violent, so I just let is lose. It did not look good, but whatever, it worked.

This is Israel. A grand voyage do we do, in the middle of the storm, with waves as high as mountains, we need to stay calm, evaluate the situation, not start the panic. It will be dangerous, hazardous, and we will be the smallish country. But true bliss lies in humility towards the world we are living in, and if we really stay afloat, with our gazes searching out the redemption all the time, we will be the true people of g-d, as we are promised to be.

G-d bless the wild nature, as we steer it upon our course towards salvation.

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