Stay in the boat!

I was browsing the gift shop at Holy Dormition Monastery when I found a charming little wood carving that caught my eye. About three inches long, it depicted a nun on a tiny ship with hand-painted lettering of this brief but impactful quote by Fr. Roman Braga of blessed memory:

“Stay in the Boat!”

I loved that small carving and its simple yet powerful reminder to abide within the salvific and stabilizing rhythms of our Orthodox Faith. Now displayed prominently in my icon corner, I meditate on that quote daily, especially during times of distress when the waves of life feel choppy and ominous.

It’s not that I purposefully abandon ship, deliberately diving off the edge into the ocean. It’s more like I fall prey to the distractions all around me, peering so far over the edge that I accidentally stumble overboard. 

Thankfully, those fortifying rhythms, as well as the intentional living habits I’ve been working on establishing over the last six years, are always there to return to when I feel like I’m drowning.

This past week, we went on vacation. It was a wonderful trip with extended family, filled with beach days, historical tours, ice cream cones, and lazy afternoons reading and napping in a hammock. The downtime and change of scenery were a true gift, but I did notice some notable consequences of forgoing my regular daily schedule. Specifically, how even minor lapses in attentiveness and vigilance make me susceptible to overthinking and impulsiveness.

It reinforced a valuable lesson I’ve been learning over and over: faith and hope grow stronger through consistency in small acts of discipline and self-control—bookending days with prayer, attending liturgical services, making meals, folding laundry, staying on task, practicing gratitude, embracing simplicity, and establishing daily routines that nurture a healthy body, a peaceful mind, a calming home environment, and a fruitful life. 

In the daily rhythms for everyone everywhere, we live our lives in the marketplaces of this world: in homes and neighborhoods, in schools and on farms, in hospitals and businesses, and our vocations are bound up in the ordinary work that ordinary people do. We are not great shots across the bows of history; rather, by simple grace, we are hints of hope.

- Steven Garber

Back in Indiana, we found our newly landscaped backyard looking very overgrown and unruly. It took my husband and me hours to mow, edge, and weed our way back to the state of tidiness we’d enjoyed before our departure. Midway through the extensive weeding process, my husband said, “There really are many similarities between gardening and the spiritual life.” Just ten days of neglect had given those weeds ample opportunity to breed, multiply, and take over.

I am abundantly thankful for the precious memories made on our vacation, and I have a whole new appreciation for the familiar work I fell back into upon returning home. It felt like climbing back into the boat and re-experiencing the longed-for peace of seeking first the Kingdom of God, restoring beauty and order in my living space and schedule, detaching from noisy thoughts, and fixing all my attention on doing the next right, edifying thing in the present moment.