Owen Hardage started going to sea when he was just a young boy, making his first trip across the Pacific Ocean at the age of eight in 1934. As a young man, he served in the Navy during World War II, then later made a career of it. He yearned to be on the water even in his later years, taking multiple passenger ship cruises.
Owen recorded some of his memories of and musings about sea life in At Sea With God, which his wife Jeanette helped him to prepare for publication in 2008. The way the chapters are patterned suggests that perhaps they were meant to be used as individual devotionals, slowly and one at a time, but I like to enjoy the book all in a sitting. I let the waves of words about the ocean wash over me, so to speak, and end up with a powerful sense of the ways of seafarers through the centuries.
It makes me wish I had asked Owen more questions about his days at sea while he was still alive. I would have liked to know more about the things he mentions just briefly: controlling large guns on a WW II destroyer, sailing into Tokyo harbor at the end the war, picking up returning Gemini astronauts, experiencing St. Elmo’s fire during an electrical storm.
Jeanette may not have been quite as devoted as Owen to seagoing, but she certainly appreciated it in her own way. In 1998, she shared the poem below, which also appeared in Faith and Other Matters.
The Sea
What about the sea
Calls out, “Listen, listen?”
A constancy I hear
That reassures my soul.
Calm me, gentle waves—
Crashing surf, strike awe.
Your power, God,
Lets the sea roll on.Sea-foam now white, now brown,
First published in Explorer Magazine, Spring-Summer 1998, Vol. 24(1), p. 26
Water blue-black-green
Calls out, “Look and see,
Glimpse eternity.”
Tides rise and fall,
The same, the same, the same.
Your power, God,
Lets the sea roll on.