Flags
This evening, my mom invited some family over for dinner, and I got a chance to talk to my cousin Carney who is 89 through most of the evening. She has just moved into an assisted living space after being on a farm most of her life, and it has been really disorienting for her.
I have a
friend who is a textile artist. Among other things, she sews nautical flags
because, besides the fact that they’re gorgeous, there’s an accidental poetry
to them. According to Merritt Tierce, “There are forty flags in a complete set
of international maritime signal flags--- one for each letter of the English
alphabet, one for each number, and four flags called substitutes, which perform
special operations.”
Raised by
themselves or in different combinations, the flags mean different things. White
with a blue cross, followed by a flag divided into four colored triangles means
What is the wind doing? Yellow and red triangles mean Man overboard. There
are combinations for races and to warn about gales. Tierce writes, “I wish we
could fly such flags, we humans, ships unto ourselves, to communicate our
states of balm or damage, our current headings, our desires and lacks. Maybe my
friend’s radio has gone out, but at least he could fly his small
I-am-suffering-on-this-sunny-day flag and I could raise my
I-will-take-a-walk-with-you-and-listen flag. We could see each other,
understand, and act, without having to say all the words.”
These days,
with radio and digital communication, satellites and GPS, ships still keep
flags on board in case all else fails, but they rarely use them. Flags on ships are a bit like oxygen masks on
planes: They’re necessary when things go very badly wrong. If all you have left,
drifting alone in the middle of the vast ocean, is a small square of flapping
fabric calling for help, things are about as dire as they can be.
Now picture
yourself in the boat, lost and afraid, adrift as the sun sets, with no way to
contact anyone except for the flag you’ve been given for this very moment. You
don’t know what else to do, so you raise the flag--- bright white with a red X.
And you see
a ship, distant but drawing nearer. It hoists flags in response, a bright red
diamond on a white field, followed by another made of two triangles, yellow and
red, and then lastly a white trapezoid marked with a red circle.
This is the
flag combination that my friend sewed to hang on her bedroom wall. It means I
will keep close to you during the night.
When I was
drifting in grief, not knowing what else to do, the prayers of the church,
especially the prayers of Compline, became my flag to fly in the night.
The hope
God offers us is this: he will keep close to us, even in darkness, in doubt, in
fear and vulnerability. He does not promise to keep bad things from happening.
He does not promise that night will not come, or that it will not be
terrifying, or that we will immediately be tugged to shore.
He promises
that we will not be left alone. He will keep watch with us in the night.
Spufford
writes that, ultimately, “we don’t ask for a creator who can explain himself.
We ask for a friend in time of grief, a true judge in times of perplexity, a
wider hope than we can manage in time of despair.” If we suffer deeply, he says, there is no
explanation, no reason, no answer that can ease our heartbreak. “The only
comfort that can do anything- and probably the most it can do is help you
endure, or if you cannot endure to fail and fold without wholly hating yourself-
is the comfort of feeling yourself loved.”
In that
end, that’s what I needed to know.
- Tish Harrison Warren, Praying in the Dark
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