Soundings Log - Entry 1
“… so they let down anchors and prayed for day to come.”
Founding Sounding Depths is one of the most consequential decisions I have ever made. It is the fruit of many years of spiritual transformation and a long, clumsy discernment process. Like so many other efforts in my life, I did not find the step an easy one to take. Typically, transitions for me involve what one might call “distress of soul.” Often, I hear of others whose transitions sound to me like a quaint fairy tale, glorious invitations to dance in ballrooms of advancement. If transitions are fairy tales, for me they’ve typically felt like they’ve been written by the Brothers Grimm requiring me to do battle with mysterious creatures emerging from the Shadow world.
To put it another way, in order to sail upon the open seas of life in the current of God’s love, I’ve first had to sound the depths which lie beneath them. The treacherous realities submerged far below. The depths of life, both at large and in my own soul. Before the advent of modern sonar, those who ventured the high seas would gauge the depths of the waters below them, by dropping a weighted line into the waters. Marked at regular intervals, the line, as it sank, indicated what lay in the deep. An essential task if sailors were to avoid the shallow bottoms, sharp reefs, or approaching unknown shorelines which could lead to shipwreck.
When sounding, as he sailed along, the leadsman would call out something like, “by the deep 10 … by the deep 8 … by the deep 6.” I’ve had a strange fixation with Patrick O’brian’s Aubrey Maturin novels over the years. Brilliant books, but strange for a landsman like myself who’s scarcely set foot aboard a ship sailing the open seas. Yet, through these maritime tales, the act of sounding has been deeply impressed upon my mind. I can hear the leadsman call “by the deep.”
St. Paul himself heard soundings such as these. He once found himself aboard a ship almost certain to sink. So they took a sounding and found twenty fathoms. A little farther on they took a sounding again and found fifteen fathoms. And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come (Acts 27:28-29). “By the deep 20 … by the deep 15 …” an ominous sounding. Yet, one essential to hear if necessary preparations were to be made and life possibly spared. Lord, how I love tales of adventure upon the open seas. Passages made through raging storms. Voyages through waters deep, unstable, unknown.
But Lord too how often I’ve dreaded what the soundings of my own seas have forecast. Times when there was nothing to do but let down anchor and pray for day. Yet, I am finding, such soundings are necessary for the spiritual passage I seek to make. At least for me they are. I suspect too that I am not alone; that each of us must pass through our own treacherous seas. As we do, hearing our soundings is of necessity. Listening to the leadsman of the soul of the utmost concern. In its essence, this is what I seek to do in my spiritual direction practice.
The brilliant poet Malcolm Guite made spiritual associations with the seafaring technique of sounding which captured my imagination. Captured my imagination to such a degree that it inspired the name of the venture I have undertaken at Sounding Depths. If you take the time to read this poem, ponder with me, could it be that despite the depths you’ve known, or know, everlasting arms are indeed beneath?
The Christian Plummet.
Down into the icy depths you plunge,
The cold dark undertow of your depression,
Even your memories of light made strange,
As you fall further from all comprehension.
You feel as though they’ve thrown you overboard,
Your fellow Christians on the sunlit deck,
A stone cold Jonah on whom scorn is poured,
A sacrifice to save them from the wreck.
But someone has their hands on your long line,
You sound for them the depths they sail above,
One who takes Jonah as his only sign
Sinks lower still to hold you in his love,
And though you cannot see, or speak, or breathe,
The everlasting arms are underneath.
https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/the-christian-plummet/