Rachel’s Reflections

I’ve been really stressed at work lately.  Everyone at work has been stressed lately.  Late hours, extra work.  We’re undermanned–about 70% manning just at a guess and have been that way for awhile, so this stress has just been building up.  I’ve found myself being really grumpy the last two days and snapping at people.  Not good.

So today when I got home from work I went swimming.  It’s gotten warm enough I could do that.  I didn’t get off work until 1800 (6:00 p.m.) and it was getting dark and then my battery in my car was dead, so I walked home.  Thankfully I live close enough to walk.  So when I got changed and went up to the top floor (the roof) it was dark.  It was odd swimming in the dark, but at least I didn’t have to worry about sunburn!  I spent half an hour in the pool and was the only one there.  I enjoyed it.  I may make a regular habit of it.  I know I need to do more exercise than what I get in command PT (an hour 3x a week), and I do do tae-kwon-do, which is two hours on Saturday, but I feel I need to do more the rest of the week.  Either that or cut back on the junk food.  And I don’t like running; so swimming may be something I can do.  We’ll see.

The main reason I went because “they” say that exercise is a good stress-release.  I’ve always found exercise to be stressful, so I don’t like to do it.  But maybe that’s because I don’t do a kind of exercise I like.  So tonight I did a kind I like.  So we’ll see if tomorrow I feel less stressed.  I know it will be just as busy as today and yesterday, and even though it is supposed to be a short day (Thursday is like your Friday–the last day of the work week), I know it won’t be.  So we’ll see if “they” are right.

Don’t be surprised if posts are erratic in the near future.  I may not have much time to write posts.  So bear with me.

And swimming is fun even though I’m not very good at it.  Maybe I can develop this “culture of fitness” the CNO wants all sailors to have, yet.

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Saturday was an historic day for my former ship, the former USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67), and I didn’t even know about it until today. So that is why I am posting about this today and not Saturday.  I have pictures of my own, which I will attempt to post soon.

Saturday the John F. Kennedy was towed to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard where it will be “mothballed” or kept in an inactive status.  I read about it in this article called “An outpouring of memories upon JFK arrival.”  Follow the link to read the whole article.

The USS John F. Kennedy’s keel was laid down on 22 October 1964 at Newport News, Virginia, by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company; it was launched on 27 May 1967, sponsored by Miss Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President Kennedy (she was only about nine at the time); it was commissioned at Newport News on 7 September 1968, Captain Earl P. Yates in command; and it was decommissioned at Mayport, Florida, on 23 March 2007, Captain Todd A. Zechin in Command. 

Those are the basic stats of the ship.  If you want more stats or more information about its missions, deployments, and service you can find them here.  Scroll down until you get to the picture of Caroline Kennedy christening the ship.  That’s where the part about CV 67 starts.  I don’t remember if she came to the decommissioning or not.  I know there was talk of her coming, but I don’t remember if she was there that day.  I was too busy manning the rails and trying not to pass out in the heat.

Yes, I almost passed out.  There was a bunch of us selected to man the rails.  This means standing at attention spaced at “double-arm interval” around the flight deck.  Actually we only manned the pierside side of the ship.  (Double-arm interval means you stretch out your arms and the person next to you does the same and you move away (or towards) each other until your fingers can barely touch.  Then you drop your arms.  You are at a double-arm interval.)  And we had to wear our dress blues.  Dress blues are made of wool and are actually black in color.  And Florida in late March is warm.  And we were out in the sun on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.  And there were some long-winded politicians down there on the elevator (they were using for a stage).  So is it any wonder anyone would start to feel a little lightheaded?  I did all the things–don’t lock my knees, wiggle my toes, shift my weight–all the ways you learn to move that don’t look as if you’re moving.  They don’t ease the pain of standing there in one position for a very long time much, but they do help some.  Unless of course nothing helps and you seem destined to pass out.  And I almost did.  I had to be helped into the island and sit down and drink water while one of the standbys took my spot.  I’ve always wondered what the audience thought or if they even noticed.  Maybe I wasn’t hydrated enough that day.  I don’t know.  But I do know that when it came time for us to go down and form up on the pier I was fine.  The whole time we were in formation on the pier I was fine.  So I don’t know.  But now you understand why I really wasn’t aware of what was happening in the decommissioning ceremony.

So my stats with this ship is I joined its crew on 27 February 2006 and left it on 6 May 2007.  So I was there for the decommissioning ceremony and for the decom process afterwards.  I spent about 15 months on board–and I mean on board–I lived on the ship.  I slept in what they call a coffin rack.  It was around 26 inches wide and probably about 6 feet long or maybe a little shorter and had a “roof”–you couldn’t sit up in it.  When you lay on your back the ceiling of it was 3 or 4 inches above your nose.  How do you deal with that?  You shut your eyes so you can’t see it and you roll over on your side and you don’t think about it and you go to sleep.  Every night.  Unless you like to fall asleep on your back.  Then omit the rolling over on your side part.

By the time I joined the crew the ship had sat pierside for about a year waiting to decom.  They had gone on their last deployment in 2005 and had been a training carrier, but when I joined it the flight deck was uncertified, meaning it couldn’t launch or recover aircraft, and the catapults were broken.  There were other things wrong too, but that was the major stuff.  The Navy wouldn’t spend the money needed to fix it; it wanted to decom it.  But Congress wouldn’t allow the Kennedy to be decommed because it was convinced the country needed 12 aircraft carriers.  So the Kennedy sat pierside.  Doing nothing.  It was very frustrating.  When I joined the ship the morale was already low, and it just got lower.  I always wondered what the point of having 12 carriers was if one of them was inoperational.  Sure we could put to sea, but we couldn’t fight.  We couldn’t launch birds.  So what was the point of keeping us in the Navy?  It was like keeping a toothless, clawless wolf around “just in case” you needed him at some point when your younger, healthier wolves failed to defend the pack.  !?!

So we waited until the new fiscal year and the new budget.  During this time the main opponent to our decomming switched sides for some reason and convinced the rest of Congress that our country could get by with 11 carriers.  And so we were able to decom.  I thought it interesting in that first article I mentioned that it says:

According to language in the fiscal 2007 defense authorization act, the Navy must maintain the ship so it can be activated in a national emergency, if needed, until the nuclear-powered carrier George H.W. Bush is ready to join the fleet in 2009.

Again, !?!  So they have this ship mothballed because they might want to use it someday?  To use the previous metaphor, this is like keeping a gutted wolf, a wolf skin, around just in case you might need an extra fighter. 

Do you know what a decom process is like?  It depends on what the final disposition of the ship is, but on the Kennedy they basically stripped the ship down.  There was so much equipment taken out.  There was so much stuff thrown away.  The ship was basically stripped down and gutted and then each compartment (room) sealed shut.  If the Navy didn’t want to spend the money to fix the ship in the first place, what makes Congress think they’d want to spend a whole bunch of extra money to both fix the ship and put back all the equipment and stuff that was taken out or thrown away?  (And there was a lot of stuff thrown away.)  But that’s Congress for you.

So the Kennedy is mothballed until at least 2009.  I wonder if they’ll make some decision to do something else with it then.  The article said it could be a museum or a test target or an artificial reef.  Turning ships into artificial reefs seems to be real popular in the Navy right now, and I don’t think any of her decommissioning crew would be sorry to see her blown up (they would probably pay money to get a chance to participate), but I hope she gets turned into a museum.  There was talk that both the Kennedy family and the City of Boston had expressed interest.  Boston would have to figure out where they’d put her if they bought her.  But I think it would be cool to visit it someday when I have kids and say to them, “Look, this is the ship Mommy was on.  She lived and worked here.”  And maybe even show them my rack(s).  (I had three.  But not at the same time.)

So farewell, John F. Kennedy.  I wasn’t sorry to see you go, but it turns out I did learn some things from you.  I learned to persevere in a difficult situation.  I learned to get along with and work for people I didn’t like and who weren’t fair.  I learned that Jesus is my friend.  And if nothing else, I really appreciate my flat!
 

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Happy Easter, everyone!

This is one of my favorite holidays of the year.  It is the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.  He died, but He did not stay dead.  This is the most important belief of Christianity.  Some would disagree with me.  They would say Jesus’ death is the most important belief.  And yes, that’s important.  But without the resurrection that is nothing.  It’s just a dead man.

You see, everyone dies.  And there have been many people throughout history who died for others.  And some people have even come back to life again.  Jesus Himself raised people from the dead.  But no one did what Jesus did.  He did these three things:

1. He lived a sinless life.  He kept the whole law and never offended in one point.
2. He died for the sins of humankind.  He died a substitutionary death, experiencing God’s wrath in the place of those who deserved it.
3. He rose from the dead–a proof of God’s acceptance of his death and sacrifice and at the same time conquering man’s greatest and oldest enemy–death.

All three are important.  Jesus conquered death for me; He conquered sin; and He keeps me from having to experience the wrath of God.  And when I think of God’s holiness, I feel so dirty in comparison.  I don’t deserve to have any favor with God, and yet Jesus makes it possible.

It’s awesome when you think about it.  Jesus didn’t have anyone raise Him from the dead.  He did it Himself.  And He didn’t just have a near-death experience.  He was in the grave, stone-cold–pronounced dead–for three days.  That’s long enough for the body to start decomposing.  And if you know anything about how he died–crucifixion–you know there’s no way He could have been anything but dead.

And then three days after His burial when His followers went to mourn at the grave, He wasn’t there.  They thought somebody had stolen the body, that someone had played the cruelest kind of joke on them, but then He appeared to them and talked to them, and they could see and hear and touch Him.  He was real.  He was really alive.  It was amazing.  It had never happened before.  And it has never happened since.

By rising from the dead Jesus proved two things: that He is God and that God accepted His sacrifice.

If any of His followers doubted Jesus’ divinity, His resurrection caused them to stop doubting.  Coming back to life after being dead takes power.  And who else would have that kind of power but He who could create life in the first place?  And who can create life but God?  Jesus’ resurrection shows that He has the ultimate power–that of creating life, especially life from death.

And His resurrection shows that He does that on a spiritual scale as well.  For what is the message of the gospel but that Jesus lived a sinless life, thus earning Him favor with God, but chose to instead suffer God’s wrath on behalf of people (you and me) who could never earn that favor and who would otherwise be doomed to suffer God’s wrath?  And that He basically creates new spiritual life where before there was just deadness.  (Ephesians 2:1,5; 2 Corinthians 5:17)  God accepted His sacrifice.  And He had to come back to tell us about it.  Otherwise how would we know?  Besides, if He conquered sin (that sacrifice God accepted) but couldn’t or didn’t conquer death, what good is that really?  Don’t we fear death a whole lot more than judgment?  What good is power if it isn’t useful?  And so Jesus conquered death too.  He left no enemies undefeated.

And He offers the same power to us.  Not only can He save our souls, but He can save our lives as well.  I mean the day-to-day living of our lives.  The life of Jesus in us breathes power into our routines; He helps us fulfill our responsibilities when they would overwhelm us.  He changes us too.  His business that first Easter Sunday and every day since has been and is to create new life out of death.  He takes our brokenness, our hurts, our issues, our bad habits, our problems, our failings, our sinfulness, and redeems it.  He makes us new creatures–new, but still us.  He makes us better people.  From the inside out, not the outside in.  In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he prays that his readers would know

what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power

which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:19,20)

and in his letter to the Philippians Paul writes that his goal is to

…know Him [Christ] and the power of His resurrection… (Philippians 3:10)

May you know the power of Jesus’ resurrection today and every day.  May we all live in that power daily.

If you will permit, I’d like to share my favorite resurrection hymn.  I learned this hymn as a very young child.  My dad taught it to me at home.  It’s always been special to me since.

Listen to it at cyberhymnal.

Christ Arose

Low in the grave He lay, Jesus my Savior!
Waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!

Refrain:

Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes;
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever with His saints to reign.
He arose!  He arose!
Hallelujah!  Christ arose!

Vainly they watch His bed, Jesus my Savior!
Vainly they seal the dead, Jesus my Lord!

Refrain

Death cannot keep his prey, Jesus my Savior!
He tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord!

Refrain

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March 21 is Mother’s Day here in the Middle East.  I didn’t know that until I went to church tonight.  At the end of the service they had the kids come down from the children’s room and sing a song for the adults.  And of course they were cute, and all the proud parents snapped pictures with their phone cameras.  Afterwards they announced that as it was Mother’s Day, they had a gift for all the mothers.

I thought, “Did I hear that right?  Did they say ‘Mother’s Day’?”

Yes, I did.  It never occurred to me that anyone celebrated Mother’s Day any other time than the second Sunday in May, which is May 11 this year.

And then they handed me a gift.  I said, “I’m not a mother.”  But Margo, the pastor’s wife, insisted.  She said, “But you’re a mother to all our kids.”  Well, I do play with them.  And I did “threaten” to take a couple of them home.  So now I have my very first Mother’s Day gift.  It is a small sailboat made out of metal and on the sail it says, “Be Still, and Know that I Am God.  Psalm 46:10.”

So happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers in Bahrain and the Middle East!  I hope your day was special and that your family treated you right.

And for all you mothers out there in other countries, like the U.S., you can have two days if you want!  Isn’t that great?  So next year, if you’re feeling in need of appreciation, you can announce to your family that you’re celebrating Mother’s Day March 21 as well as in May.   You have a global outlook on life and are being cosmopolitan and all that kind of stuff.  That way you get presents two days a year.  Cool, huh?

What do you think, Mom Bicha and Mom Cornelius?  Do you think Jeremy and I should celebrate two Mother’s Days?  Or are you happy with just the one in May?  What do you think, Jeremy?

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Today is Good Friday.  It is the day commonly celebrated by Christians as the day Jesus was crucified.

I remember reading once I John 2:1,2:

My little children, these things I write to you, that you may not sin.  And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

Actually I was reading it in French that day, which looks like this:

Mes petits enfants, je vous écris ces choses, afin que vous ne péchiez point.  Et si quelqu’un a péché, nous avons un avocat aupréz du Père, Jésus-Christ le juste.

Il est lui-même une victime expiatoire pour nos péchés, non seulement pour les notres, mais aussi pour ceux du monde entier.

Now I knew avocat (advocate) was lawyer.  Jesus is our lawyer, representing us and pleading our case before God.  That much I understood.  But what I didn’t understand was what expiatoire meant.  So I read the same verse in English, but that didn’t help.  I didn’t know what propitiation meant either.  So I looked up expiatoire in my French-English dictionary, and it said that expiatoire meant a sacrifice or in place of.  That was interesting.  I already knew what victime was–victim.  So when it said that Jesus was a victime expiatoire, it was saying that Jesus was a sacrificial victim, a victim who died in the place of another.

And He was a victime expiatoire for nos péchés–our sins.  So He died in the place of our sins.  “And not for ours only but also for the whole world” or du monde entier–the entire world.  And yet He is our lawyer.  If life were a courtroom drama and God were the judge and we were on trial for our sins, then according to this verse Jesus, the righteous, the sinless one, died for us.  He took the death penalty for us.  And now He represents us before God.  In such a scenario only Jesus can convincingly argue for our aquittal.  If the sentence has already been served, then what need is there for any further trial?  Only Jesus’ substitutionary death (which is what propitiation means) can set us free.

So Jesus is my victime expiatoire.  He sacrificed Himself to die in my place.  Well does the Bible say (Romans 5:7,8):

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

People will die for their loved ones; they will die for comrades-in-arms; but I don’t know of anyone who will die for a sinner, a bad person.  But Jesus did.

In honor of today, I would like to share my favorite “cross” hymn.  The words were written by Isaac Watts and the music by Lowell Mason.  You can read more about these men or listen to the music at cyberhymnal.

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, my God;
All the vain things that charm me most–
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See, from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small:
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

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Today is the first day of spring!  For those of you in northern climates you are probably rejoicing right now.  It’s finally getting warmer, the snows are gone for good (you hope, especially those of you in Canada), the crocuses and daffodils and other spring flowers are blooming, the redbuds are blooming, the trees are leafing out, and poetry is in your soul.  Well, I don’t know about you, but spring always makes me want to write a poem even though I’m a lousy poet.  So I will spare you one of my poems.  I wouldn’t want to spoil this day for you.

Oh, I forgot one other sign of spring.  The robins are back.  That was always my favorite sign of spring.  (My least favorite being dandylions.)  The robins always come first of all the birds.  They come when it’s stil cold out and sometimes still snow on the ground.  For the first week or so you see them walking around their feathers fluffed up to keep warm, looking like little brown and red fluffy balls.  You wonder, “Why didn’t you stay south for an extra week, bird?  Didn’t you know it was still cold here?”  But then it warms up, and they are fine.  I always liked to look for them.  For me sighting the first robin of spring was a moment to celebrate.  For me that signalled the end of winter (much more so than some groundhog in February) and the beginning of spring.  Sometimes I like to think that the robins brought spring; that if they didn’t come back then spring wouldn’t come.  I like robins.  I think they’re my favorite bird.

There are no robins in Bahrain.  But we do have flowers.  The red and purple and white petunias around base are particularly pretty.  And we have warm weather.  It’s still a little cool in the mornings, but by midday it warms up so that you can run around in a short-sleeved shirt and be comfortable.  That is, to me.  Other people say it’s hot.  I say to them, “Just wait.”  After last summer, it’s not hot unless sweat is running down your back and your face at the same time less than five minutes after you step outside and you feel like you need to drink a gallon of water a day.

But right now it’s absolutely beautiful weather.  I’m really enjoying this time of year.  Of course, spring is my favorite time of year.  Oh, correction to above: if in Illinois my least favorite part of spring is rain.  It doesn’t just rain in Illinois; it rains for two to three weeks straight–every day.  That gets old, real fast.  But otherwise, it’s beautiful.  And there are lots of robins.

Happy spring, everyone!

What do you like about spring?

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It has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword.  Swords are powerful.  There are large two-handed battle swords and small, but just as deadly pointed rapiers.  The large swords, which are cutting swords, can cut a man in half.  And that would be a man wearing armor–at least leather or chain mail, if not plate–I don’t remember reading if the swords were ever able to cut through plate.  Someone who knows can correct me.  The two-handed swords were powered by their own momentum as much as the muscle strength of the wielder, who could get his entire body’s strength behind the blow.  But the smaller, one handed or one and a half handed (these could be used with either one or two hands–the name doesn’t imply the user has one half of a hand) could cut a man in two, definitely cut the limbs off a man. 

And then there were the rapiers, the “gentleman’s sword.”  This was long, very slender, and pointed.  Due to its extreme slenderness it was usually not sharpened on the sides.  It wouldn’t have done much good to sharpen it anyway as due to its cross-section it wasn’t good for cutting.  But what it was good for, excellent for, was stabbing.  And that’s how it was used.  And due to the limited medical knowledge of the time (Renaissance time) puncture wounds were harder to recover from and thus more deadly than cuts (as in “It’s a mere scratch”).  Thus this was a very deadly weapon and was the weapon of choice for duels, at least until pistols became accurate enough to be popular.

Nowadays we have even more deadly weapons.  We have guns and we have bombs and we have nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction.  We could destroy the entire world if we wanted to, and in fact there’s a lot of literature been written about this very possibility.

But above and beyond all that is the power of words.  Words too can destroy.  Words too can destroy whole civilizations, whole worlds.  As an example, Hitler used the power of words to control the German people and lead them to war and the subsequent destruction of so many lives.  Political and religious leaders throughout history have motivated and controlled people, led people through their use of words.  There are three major religions of the world today based on words–”People of the Book”–Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Words are what has powered the spread of all three religions around the world.  Words are powerful.

But words can do more than destroy.  They can do what the weapons of warfare cannot do: words can build.  Words can be used to build civilizations.  The above mentioned religions are each responsible for amazing civilizations throughout history, from the Israel of Kings David and Solomon to the Byzantine Empire and Christian Europe to the Moors of Spain and the Ottomans, just to name a few.  And don’t forget the Zorostrians of Persia (now Iran).  They had a whole civilization based on their religion–on words.

Words can hurt or they can heal.  There’s a rhyme that is sometimes quoted to children.  It is this: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, / but words can never hurt me.”  That rhyme is a lie.  I was hurt by words as a child, and I’m sure you have been too.  I say words hurt more than sticks and stones.  Sticks and stones and other weapons can only hurt the body.  Yes, they may be able to kill, but it is only the body.  Words can touch the soul.  Let me repeat that.  Words can touch one’s very soul.  They can heal the soul or harm the soul or even destroy the soul.

That, my friends, is power, real power.  Words have the power to get down into the ”real me” of each one of us and touch our core selves.  And to know we have the power to do that to each other is both awesome and frightening.

In the Bible, Proverbs 18:21 says this:

Death and life are in the power of the tongue,

And those who love it will eat its fruit. 

Death and life, folks.  That’s powerful.  That’s sobering.  And what about the second phrase?  “Those who love it will eat its fruit”?  Do you love words?  Maybe not.  Not everyone is called to a life of using words–to speak, to write, etc.  Some people truly love words.  They love learning new vocabulary, they love reading, they love learning new languages, they love talking to others, and they love learning how to use words to express their own thoughts to others.  People like that keep blogs.  So maybe I’m really talking to myself.  But we all use words to some extent or another.  And so there’s the warning.  A promise or a warning, I’m not sure.  Maybe a little of both.  It says to me that those who love words (and I think this would include people who like to talk) will experience both the death and the life of the power of words.  Wow.  I’m all for the life part, but not so sure about the death part.  That’s why I take it as a warning: Be careful how I use words.  I can bring life to others and I can also bring death.  What I say can have permanent results, as I can touch a person’s soul–their very essence.  That’s serious.  It’s definitely something to keep in mind as I write this blog.  I hope I use this power wisely.

What about you?

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