Grit & Grace: The Transformation of a Ship & a Soul by Deborah Rudell: EXCERPT

Grit & Grace: The Transformation of a Ship & a Soul 

“Engaging and informative, with moments of great excitement—but also disturbing and weighted with angst.” —Kirkus Reviews

Deborah Rudell’s world unravels when the leaders of her spiritual commune are exposed, arrested, and imprisoned for bioterrorism and attempted murder. Crushed and adrift, she moves her family off the commune to create a sense of normalcy. But when her husband seeks an opportunity to dismantle and rebuild a derelict fifty-foot schooner, Deborah uproots their children once again and joins him in Kauai. For the next five years, she dedicates her life to restoring a boat.

Pouring herself into the work at hand can only distract her so much as disillusionment about the cult’s lies and manipulation slowly rises to the surface. While she grapples with emotional turmoil and contemplates a new life path, Deborah sets out to accomplish something she never thought possible: sailing across the Pacific to the Olympic Peninsula. Will the dangers that come with navigating the ocean be too much to bear, or will she find resolution and fortitude in the turbulent adventure?

Grit & Grace: The Transformation of a Ship & a Soul is one woman’s account of conquering overwhelming challenges with tenacity and ingenuity and ultimately discovering her inner strength.

Gale

Pacific Ocean

June 1992

Even if I screamed no one would hear me over the sound of the waves and the fierce wind; a wind so strong my slender body couldn’t stay upright unless I held onto the boat. It was pitch black, and I was alone on the helm for the predawn watch aboard a fifty-foot wooden schooner. My husband slept in the cockpit, and three more crew members were tied into their bunks below.

The compass glowed dim red in the blackness, preserving my night vision. It was the only thing my eyes discerned except the occasional foamy wave tops that glowed briefly with limey phosphorescence before being swept under the dark water of the next wave. My fingers, slick with rain and spray, encircled the spokes of the wheel as I adjusted our heading according to the pale numbers of the compass. I struggled to keep the needle on 000, our northerly heading, but the violent pitching of the vessel made it almost impossible.

The end of June was supposed to be the ideal time to cross the Pacific from Hawaii to Washington, a time when conditions were the most stable. Yet here I was in forty-five knot winds. Technically, a gale.

Harnessed to the boat, I clung to the wheel with my hands, to the decks with my bare toes, and to the compass heading with my eyes, my mind rapidly spinning out of control. Fear. Panic. Terror. We’ll be swamped, capsize, and drown. 

The sea was immensely powerful. Elixir was puny, fragile like a single piece of straw in a whitewater river. The masts will break off like toothpicks; we’ll tip over and sink. I imagined myself sliding off the boat, the cold water seeping into my foul weather gear, the waves holding my head beneath the foaming sea, breathing in the salty water, gasping. My teeth clamped tight around a paper tongue. No saliva left. I tried licking saltwater from my lips, but I couldn’t swallow.

What had I been thinking over the last five years of building this boat and deciding to sail it across the Pacific? How could I have ever thought it would be fun or exciting? How did I ever dare to presume I could learn to be at sea when conditions were less than ideal? Let alone in a gale?

Unable to find any relief from the deafening noise and violent motion of the storm, I tried to search inside myself for ways to navigate extreme distress and control my panic. All I found were images of me floating face down in the dark waves, alongside the corpses of my husband and son as we drifted among bits of a broken ship. And it was only our third night at sea; we’d only just begun our long ocean journey north. 

What’s that? My mind alerted me. There’s something on the rail. I strained to see through the black night. No, nothing. Yet I sensed something there on the rail, despite the thrashing seas and the wail-scream in the rigging. Whatever it was, the beings I intuited on the rail caught my attention, gradually pulling my focus away from my terror and thoughts of drowning. I had read books about people in life threatening situations, during which they experienced visions or heard voices that assisted them to survive untenable ordeals. 

Angels? Could that be possible? Is this what is happening to me? Has my mind snapped from the intensity of my circumstances? 

There seemed to be several of them, round and smushing together. A perception rather than an actual vision, they appeared to be joking with each other, laughing so hard they nearly fell off the rail. I am definitely going off my rails.

It was as if they were enjoying the ride, and at the same time assuring me that, despite the enormity of the sea and the ferocity of the wind, the elements were merely frolicking. This communication was through a mixture of pictures, words, and feelings conveyed in a flash. Frolicking? Really? Wind at this speed rips branches off trees and causes cars to veer off the road. The extremes of the Pacific Ocean proved larger, stronger, and louder than any thunder and lightning I had ever experienced on the lake where I grew up in British Columbia.

As the sky gradually lightened and the wind subsided, I was in awe of where I was and how I’d ended up at sea. I thought about the unusual twists and turns of my life. Was it really only ten years ago that I had abandoned a conventional life to live in a commune? How had I gone from sannyasin, disciple of a spiritual teacher, and focused on the inner, energetic world to become a sailor, a disciple of the sea and focused on the outer material world? Sitting in the cockpit and absorbing the new dawn light after the terrifying blackness of the night, my mind wandered back in time to Oregon and the Big Muddy Ranch. My awareness felt drawn to the moment when I saw my guru and master, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, for the first time. 

* * *

“You really are new, aren’t you?” The red-clad, pony-tailed sannyasin laughed kindly when I asked her what ‘drive-by’ was. I was eating lunch with two thousand other devotees in the cafeteria on my first day at the communal Ranch in the fall of 1982. 

“Bhagwan drives by on the road every day after lunch, and we line up along the edge and sing and dance and wave to Him. It’s a daily celebration,” she explained.

I followed the crowd out the door and back onto and off a bus, jostled and nudged into a line along the well-maintained gravel road. People stood quietly, some talking softly. My mind and heart were in turmoil. I had just left my home, family, and career to follow a spiritual path with a living master. While I had read His books, listened to His audiotapes, and watched His videos, I had never seen Him in person. What would it be like? 

Eventually I saw a car in the distance and then the line of disciples came alive, clapping, singing and swaying to the songs from a group of musicians half a block away. Bhagwan drove slowly, one hand moved up and down, as He celebrated with us. His dark eyes scanned the thousands of happy faces lined up to greet Him.

Standing amongst strangers, my eyes wet with tears and shining with emotion, I watched the car Bhagwan was driving follow the road lined with disciples, getting closer and closer. The last vestiges of angst, the self-doubt, the wondering what I had done by giving up my life as I knew it, all disappeared as I looked in His eyes. I felt my body dance, and my hands clapped. It was as if we were all One. Unity at last, all consumed by our love for the Master, the Enlightened One. The One who had gone before us in realizing the true nature of this world. The One who could give us glimpses of our own promise, our own abilities to transcend the density and illusion of material existence to bring peace, joy, and love from heaven above down to the Earth.

* * *

The sting of salty spray on my face disturbed my daydream, the warm tears of my past expression of love and connection to my Master transformed into the cold ocean spray of today’s reality. Is this how the Kingdom of Heaven reaches the Earth? Is this how the unseen world enters the seen? Is this the purpose of the twists and turns of a life path? Why life felt so confusing and derailed? The truth seemed so elusive and hard to grasp, to find the correct words. 

As a pink blush started to permeate the gray of early day, the Ranch experience slowly faded from my mind. I could make out the rail now, emerging from the dark in a rosy glow, materializing into something solid and real, absent angels or anything else. The boat parts were like apparitions emerging from a fog, once again becoming part of a whole wooden ship. It was surreal here at sea, remembering all of the hours and days and years since first meeting her. Remembering especially that first day when I could not imagine her being whole and sailing the sea ever again.

BUY HERE

—

Deborah Rudell lives in San Diego where she is a college professor and participates in her city’s vibrant writing community. She is a graduate of Hay House Writer’s Workshop and the Certificate in Memoir Writing Program at San Diego Writers, Ink. Her work has been published in the International Memoir Writers Association’s anthology, Shaking the Tree: I Didn’t See That One Coming. Deborah lives with her black cat in a tiny house built in 1906 by a retired sea captain, who carved a sailing ship into the front door. Grit & Grace: The Transformation of a Ship & a Soul is her first book.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers