“Change is like a storm at sea. If you do your duty, strap yourself to the mast and hold your ground, you’ll weather the storm alright. But cower with fear belowdecks, the ship will be torn asunder – and you’ll find yourself in the cold confines of the briny deep. This I suppose was a long way of saying if you don’t make way for change, it’ll sink you.” from Betsy and the Emperor by Staton Rubin
The fisherman knew the sea like a farmer knows the land. He knew where the currents ran swift and where the waves rose and fell like mountains in the wide and open. And like a farmer, he knew just when and where to harvest, during the times when shoals of mackerel and cod came thick and fast along the deep crevasses. Dangerous work but he was fit for it.
The fisherman was strong, bull shouldered, persistent – stubborn some might say. No one knows the sea like him, others would whisper with awe as he hauled his nets up with more fish then anyone else ever found.
Then the fisherman met the Teacher and the Teacher asked him to put his nets down and learn. The Teacher took the fisherman out to sea when the conditions were all wrong.
“The conditions are all wrong.” the fisherman said, but the Teacher just nodded as the shoreline faded to a twinkle.
The fisherman could feel the storm snaking up, tap tapping against his back. An unkind wind, capricious, unpredictable.
“Teacher, we must turn back, the sky is angry and the wind will only blow harder. We are out of the shallows, the waves will build until we cannot see their tops and then they will fall like a rage of war horses and we are not ready. I know the sea and we will not survive this storm.”
With this, the Teacher smiled at the fisherman, then he yawned, curled up in the stern of the boat and fell into a deep sleep, the kind of sleep that comes when everything is as it should be and the heavy work of the day is done.
Of course the storm came, and it played with the boat like a cat with a mouse. Oh you will live, no you will die. Slapping and punching, howling, bawling, dark chaos until the fisherman had done all to save the little boat and had no strength or cunning left in him.
A little while into the fisherman’s utter despair, the Teacher woke up and stretched and the waves calmed like a hysterical child who fights and whimpers before finding peace. The fisherman, who had know everything, now knew nothing.
“Why did we not just turn around?’ he asked the Teacher, “why sail into the storm when we could have been on dry land?”
“Because this is where we were supposed to be” was all the Teacher said.
Then the fisherman knew that if he had not been at the mercy of the storm, He would never have seen the mercy or the majesty of God. And this fisherman would tell you that it is far safer to be on a boat in a storm with a Teacher than it is on dry land without one.
“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” C. JoyBell C, Author of All Things Dance Like Dragonflies
When the storm comes, where will you be?
He believes in you.
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