From October 2001 to October 2004, I served as a volunteer onboard the Mercy Ship M/V Anastasis.
This website is my journal of that experience. Enjoy.

“It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.”

–Henry Ward Beecher

My last ocean line... Fittingly, it's a “tribute to a lady” – the ship that launched a world for me...

The End of a World...
29 June 2007 | Epilogue

She called to me when I was a little girl, with her white lines and intriguing tales and mystique of adventure... She called again as I reached restless adulthood, with her promise of purpose and new horizons... She called me into a life beyond my imaginings – to a voyage I might otherwise have missed...

This is what she does. She lures you from afar with her mystery and intrigue, pulls you across impossibilities and continents to her gangway, and from there perpetually takes your breath away with a reality stranger than fiction...

I've loved her since first sight, glistening at a port in Rotterdam. I've loved her on rolling nights and starry seas, from her wings to her bridge and her bow... Through her portholes and her halls... Up and down her tilting stairs... I've loved her for her sounds... The hum of her engines and splashing waves, familiar creaks and distant horn on foggy nights...

I've loved her for the memories she's witnessed... The birth of friendships, the growth of love, the bitter and sweet of goodbye... I've loved her for moments... Priceless sunsets and crowded laughter and silences laced with tears... Moments miraculous and moments monumental – moments too much for the world... When only the ocean had enough room for the inexpressible...

I've loved her for the lines on her aging face... Life-worn decks and hull scarred with memories... Loved her peaceful or petulant, triumphant or tired, lauded or lambasted... I've loved her regardless, through frustrating leaks and pitching nights and layers of rust and peeling paint... Past claustrophobia and disrepair, I've loved her as home.

I've loved her since last sight, solitary at a dock in the German north. I've loved her amid storms, of her life and mine. I've loved her burdened with cares and still afloat... Oppressed, but not crushed... Shaken, but not destroyed...

I've loved her for all she represents... for all she's witnessed in her years and all she's weathered across time. I've loved her for her resilience and grace under pressure... for her everlasting ability to inspire, even from afar. I've loved her for her timeless lines and her untold stories and her endless levels of significance...

I've loved her for what she has meant to every person who has ever set foot on her decks – black or white, rich or poor... I've loved her for all she has given, and all she has held. She was a world, within a world... A stage with a revolving cast of characters, from nations, tribes and tongues... A collector of idealistic overachievers brought down to earth and ocean by heartbreaking humanity...

I've loved her as a guardian angel in white... A haven for the hopeless and a sanctuary for the broken. An oasis of hope when nothing else in the world made sense.

I love her now in the silence that spells her significance to so many people. What other ship has touched so many lives? What other ship has changed so many worlds?

She is more than a ship. She is an epic, a beacon, an ideal... She is evidence of the divine and a witness to miracles... She was ordained and consecrated for a second life – reincarnated for a higher calling.

Ships sink. Worlds end. The living die. But souls live on...

They say there's no sea in heaven, but surely she will sail there...

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