Cycle from Crib-to-Cross
Taking form depends on the perfect dust storm. As soon as the dust settles, it has the final say. From dust to dust... We seem to be living in circles - cyclical. A chilly winter holds the hidden promise of summer. The grey dark of the small hours of the night, promises the certainty that the circle around the axle of the earth, that we will see the colours of daybreak again. New Year’s Eve, when the clock strikes midnight, we have moved around the sun once more...
Men working at sea are just as involved in the game of eternal cycles. The eternal ebb and flow of the sea, the sunrise breaking over endless waves of the oceans, the moon that affects the tides. Each man starts hoping in safe harbours and ends with the everlasting promise of going home. Men working at sea know more than most that life cycles, like those of the seas, never stop. When they sail on the horizon, far from a beach where New Year’s fires sparkle and fireworks brightly light the skies, the feelings mostly include a deep longing for home, for that which they love.
At the CSO we hear these stories every day. Very often the stories are as extreme as the storms and the silences of the oceans. The stories are often about loneliness and longing, depression and fear, war, pirates, broken families - a seaman’s life.
How naïve would we be to think that the bells on New Year’s Eve could change all, wash everything clean? But, there is something about the start of a new year, it does bring hope that things will change in the new cycle. In our case, it is better, because we start walking the way to the Cross after celebrating the birth of the Child in the manger.
In the cycle from Crib to Cross we have living hope that things will improve, that there is a possibility of looking back after the cycle around the sun and say, ‘It was good’.
During this year we will, as in the decades before, with our donors’ donations and faithful prayers, we will be with the men working at sea, supporting them in the journey around the sun. We will continue, non-stop, to tell them about the One that is not bound by cycles, circles, time and seasons. We will continue to tell them of the One that always has mercy, the One in Whom we have living hope! Your donation makes it possible. Thank you so, so much for that.
May you also, in this cycle, experience that hope and mercy. And, when it gets dark, may you continue to breathe, because we never know what wonders the next tide will bring.