WRITINGÁö¿ø
¿µÀÛ÷»èÁöµµ
¿µ¾îÀϱ⾲±â
Essay
Short Story
³ìÃëÆÄÀÏ ´Ù¿î·Îµå
1´ë1 Q&A
³ªÀÇ °­ÀÇÁøÇà»óȲ
ÁøÇàÁßÀÎ POLLÀÌ
¾ø½À´Ï´Ù.
HOME > ±³À°Áö¿ø > WRITINGÁö¿ø > Essay
Çູ¿¹°¨¿¡¼­ Áö¿øµÇ´Â writingÁö¿øÁß Essay(¼öÇÊ)ÀÔ´Ï´Ù. ÀüÈ­¿µ¾î ¼ö°­Àڵ鲲¼­´Â Essay¸¦ ÀÐ°í ·Î±×ÀÎÈÄ ¿µÀÛ÷»èÁöµµ °Ô½ÃÆÇ¿¡ ³²°ÜÁÖ½Ã¸é °­»çºÐ²²¼­ È®ÀÎÈÄ ´äº¯À» µå¸³´Ï´Ù.
µî·ÏÀÏÀÚ: 2011-03-28 Á¶È¸¼ö : 2091   
By Ryan Gerber
When I was 22, freshly graduated and green behind the ears in every way possible, I bought a sailboat. This was not just a sailboat, this was a sailing vessel; thirty solid feet of deep-blue sea-ready ship. From stem to stern every inch of her had been weathered and tried and yet, amazingly, still looked great. I have never wanted to be one of those people who go through life wishing they had done something awesome, I never want to look back and think that I really just missed out on some wonderful thing that the universe had handed me. So, despite the grumbling concerns of my parents and some of my more reserved friends, I shelled out all the money I had been saving for years and bought her. It was a grey and windy day.
Now, I had been sailing before and from time to time had even captained various sailing ships the same size as this one. However, I had never been in charge. I always had had someone who knew more than me near by, probably pretending to nap as I hoisted sails and steered us around and called out orders to the crew. But now, it was only myself and my college roommate. There was nobody else.
Far from concerned, we were ecstatic- every part of us felt alive; the lust for adventure had set in and we could not be talked out of it! Despite not having looked over the ship or checked her electric or rigging, (and clearly neverminding the charred engine that would never operate again) we set off out the harbor and out into the Gulf waters.
We had one hundred miles to sail before home. As we started to gather our bearings and check our charts we began to realize that every part of the ship was in absolute disarray; lines were tangled around the sails and mast, anchors were stuck to corroded piles of concrete barnacles, fuel was leaking out from nowhere and the ship¡¯s electric was quickly dying. The wind picked up and as the sky darkened as we realized that we desperately needed to turn back.
¡°Pull up the sails!¡± I yelled. Logan continued to work on the stubborn engine as I climbed the fifty-foot mast and tried to untangle knotted ropes. The sea grew violent and the waves began to rake over the deck of the ship. From up on the mast I held on dearly lest I be thrown to the waters. A black storm was sweeping in from behind us; in our exuberant joy at heading out to sea we had neglected to check any weather reports and we had no idea of what was about to hit us. Logan and I realized we would not make it back into the safety of the harbor and decided to lash down the sails as best we could and drop the only working anchor. Life vests were securely fastened as the rain began to fall in full.
We were crushed by the rain for hours; the scourge of the seas began to lash us without ceasing. We sealed up the cabin and held on for dear life as the ship lifted and fell on the waves- striking the sandbars and rocky ocean floor over and over and over again.
Very few times in my life do I recall being truly scared; thinking that the next few moments might be my last. This was one of those times. Suddenly, in those moments, all the nay-saying and contrary advice seems like pure wisdom, and no matter the size of your ship, when faced with the endless sea and the black towers of waves, one will always feel a hopeless sense of being small and insignificant. Rise and crash, rise and crash; for hours we waited out the storm. The mast shook and swayed, the thin sails seemed like they might rip at any time. The ship in those shallow waters was beat endlessly into the ocean¡¯s bed; we thought for sure the ship¡¯s hull would break.
But amazingly, nothing happened.
For there is something to be learned about ships is that they are made to weather the storms. Certainly there comes a time when the forces are too great, but when finally the clouds had tired of their vengeful barrage they had obligingly moved on. The waters were still rough but nowhere near what they had been. The next morning when we awoke, wet and cold, we saw that everything was in tact and nothing had been lost. We sailed the hundred miles home that day, humbled by what had happened, realizing the importance of knowing your vessel and seas in which you sail.
And the same is true for life.
Faith is a word we usually understand to have something to do with religion or ¡®god¡¯ or the divine, and usually that is exactly what we are talking about. However, in another sense, faith is the vessel with which we traverse the abstract and sometimes intangible seas of life. I know a lot of people who are atheists or agnostics, others who are angry at ideas like god and religion and want nothing to do with any of it, but these people all have faith too.
The Physics of Faith
What I had just experienced that terrible night at sea was a first hand look at the physics of sailing.
Something every sailor learns early on is that the wind never pushes you- rather it pulls the sails. The same is true for airplanes; air is forced up over the wings creating a pressure difference that creates lift. But there are other brilliant considerations in effect here; the sleek build of the body, the hollow design of the wings and mastheads so that they can bend and buckle when forces are applied.
But despite the wonderful ingenuity of design, these vessels as well as faith, require adverse forces in order to operate.
Faith is fueled by doubt. And so too by sincere questions. Delta Airlines has an ¡®inspirational¡¯ video, as I like to call it, that plays before every flight, which makes Delta look like this beautiful futuristic company. On it they illustrate the physical/philosophical challenge of flying, saying something like, ¡°If you run before the wind, you cant take off. You¡¯ve got to turn into it¡¦ The thing you push against is the thing that lifts you up.¡± It is this understanding of basic physics which allows us to fly, allows us to sail, and which allows us to have faith.
We can never escape doubt or those really hard questions about things we may never find answers too. And for a long time people were going around saying that you were somehow wrong to have doubts, wrong to question- wrong to not just lay back and accept what you were told. But when we do that, we suffer. The plane can¡¯t take off. That wind that pulls our sails and pushes up under our wings- when we lose that, we begin to drop. We begin to lose altitude and sometimes we even crash.
And we have all seen people who have crashed; they are hurt and angry and mistrustful of airplanes and sailboats and faith. They were given this wonderful tool which would take them further and higher than they could ever dream or imagine but were never taught correctly how it works. Planes do not fly on magic. Ships do not sail along powered by joy and sunshine. And faith does not soar on a steady diet of feel-good religion (or ignorance).
Like trees
I remember when I was growing up and I would sit in the park with my grandfather. He would, in a very grandfatherly way, point to the ducks and the birds and the flowers and tell me stories about them or, in language that a five-year-old could understand, explain to me the mysteries of the universe.
I remember one day in particular there was a strong wind whipping through the park; people were forsaking their picnics and pulling coats a little tighter around themselves as they walked about. We didn¡¯t stay long that day but I remember my grandfather pointing to a tree nearby and saying, ¡°Do you see that tree; how it bends back and forth? When the wind blows or when the ground shakes, even though the tall buildings might crumble and fall, the trees just bend and keep on being trees.¡±
Wow.
This was never more obvious than after the earthquake in Haiti this last year. Buildings lay broken because their rigid designs did not allow them to bend and give when the earth shook. Despite their concrete and steel, they could not stand in the face of adversity.
A lot of times I hear terms like ¡®our parents faith¡¯, usually in a negative light. We like to think that we are free thinking, independent beings who decide our fate for ourselves. And for some part that is true. But faith is often like a city. The people who have come before us have set standards for how the buildings look and are designed. And for the most part we inherit those aspects. Of course faith looks differently for every person, beliefs change like old outfits and there is never an end to fashionary trends, but the shell of the building rarely changes.
Just like buildings or cities, we may not live in our ¡®parents faith¡¯ but it is something we pass along to those that follow us. If I build a house, chances are it will be there for generations to follow. Yet, if it is to be truly strong we must realize that no matter how many bricks of doctrine we have and no matter how strong our socially-promulgated mortar might be, when the wind blows and the ground shakes, if our building is not made to withstand these forces it will fall. We must make sure that we are flexible and discerning, able to take the questions and doubts and troubles (and there are sometimes a lot of them) and learn to bend and trust in the building in which we reside.
A lot of religious people have this idea about God and religion and doctrines like heaven and hell, that if they for one second think to question the validity of their beliefs their beliefs will abandon them; if I question God, he will leave me.
This sounds more like an abusive relationship than anything else.
Men have had it in their heads for a long time that their gods needed defending. That they couldn¡¯t stand up for themselves. Well guess what- if it¡¯s true, it will still be true tomorrow.
If I question God then it is up to him to answer those questions. If I put truth on a shelf, it will still be there waiting for me when I come back for it.
That is the beauty of it all.
And you know what? I will trust in whatever truth it is all the more!
That is the beauty of faith. If you run before the wind, you can¡¯t take off. You¡¯ve got to turn into it. Thanks Delta. We need that adverse force to make us go higher and further- to take us to new great heights. And we are built to withstand the forces; we are like trees, tall and strong but which bend in the wind. But like plains and sailing ship- without those forces we crash and are stranded in the oceans¡¦
We must be able trust in the vessel in which we sail. We must be able to trust its design. To know that it can withstand.
So perhaps we can begin to safely raise up our doubts into the light of day; to hear out loud those questions that we will otherwise bury like poisonous seed in the soil of our minds.
For what have we to lose that is not also worth gaining?

¸®½ºÆ®