We crossed the International Date Line today, just after lunch. Everyone but myself went to the bridge to take it in. As for me, well I walked up to the bow and was alone for the first time in my life to lose a complete day. So, if today is Wednesday then tomorrow will be Friday.

I also was going to fast today. Not that it was for a spiritual purpose but that I had been eating more than is needed and it is starting to show. For my whole life, if I have not been able to overcome a temptation, then I have cast it away from me. In essence what was taught in the bible; if your eye offends you then pluck it out and cast it from you. That has been my course of action since I have not been able to overcome gluttony. As of lunch today and at tea, I have made a start to gain the strength of the spirit to be faced with temptation of food and to overcome the lack of will to withhold my hand from partaking. I have been praying for this strength for some time but I have also been hoping for patience and with one comes the other.

That is the first step into the reason for this journey. Not only is it a journey around the world for the sake of travel but also it is a journey and search for truth. My task is to find what has been called the marrow of life and to quote Thoreau, “So at the time of my death to find that I had not lived.” I have died to this world already and now I am in the time of my decay. The exact day of death I do not know but it was shortly after July 5, 1997. I remember the fifth of July because that was the day that, what I then called God, laid his blessing upon me. It was the first time in my worldly life that something greater than myself, mankind, or anything else imagined made me aware, self-aware of the fact that there are no coincidences in this world. I have been raised to know of a god, the god of the Hebrews, the god of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the god of Moses, the god of Adam, and the Father of the Christ. Taken to a Baptist church until I left home for college. I learned the dogma of that denomination and was a member of the Christian organization. Because of my baptism and association with the organization of the church and the blind act of following as a child does, because it was what the parents knew from their parents and on and on. I just accepted what was laid before me and thought the god of all those in the bible was the same god. The baptism I received in the Christian religion meant nothing to my Father for it was done merely out of ignorance and wanting to be and do like others. My memory is vivid of the day when the preacher asked me why I had walked to the front of the church during the time of invitation. He asked me, why have you come? I shrugged my shoulders meaning the reply, I do not know. Then he asked, have you come to accept Christ as your personal savior? I once again shrugged my shoulders. No matter whether I was sure of my actions are not, I was accepted as a new fellow Christian and baptized in the Pascagoula River. All through my life after that, while I remained going to the building that held the church, the day loomed over my head. Several times I wanted to walk down the aisle again to reaffirm my commitment, to be a baptized Christian but could never get up the strength or find the draw to walk down there again. So, I continued living the Christian life, just like all the other Christians around me. Following their lead and wanting the things that they had; house, car, kids, money, boat, toys, you know the list because you most likely are running after the same such materialistic possessions.

I graduated high school and went to college so that I could obtain that better way of life with all its luxury and comforts. While I was in college, I did what many college students do; I experimented with all that life had to offer.

After college, I obtained a good job and kept living the life I had in college. The sex, drinking, eating whatever I wanted, smoking, drugs, trying to make more money to satisfy my material desires and cravings so that I may attract the right woman that would be part of my life and lifestyle. Then we could marry and get the house, kids, join the PTA, t-ball, scouts, take political action, save the wildlife and rain forest, start the 401k plan and investments, medical, car, boat, insurance, children’s college fund… I could keep going.

My life changed on the fifth day of the seventh month in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-seven, for it was the day in my life where everything was out of my control and I had arrived at the breaking point. By nothing more than the mercy of my Father, he opened up the heavens and saved me from a road that would have led to nothingness. I had known a god intelligently until then and read and heard of miracles and on that day, I received mine. The clouds, wind and water were given way to my will and they followed my wanting because in shear desperation, within sincerity, I prayed to what I was told was out there, somewhere and he gave me His love.  A little time after that day, I sailed to the north side of Cat Island and I climbed into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and died to the pursuits of the life I was chasing, but not knowing what the true meaning of the baptism of John was to mean. I pledged myself to that which I called God and began my search for truth that is God or rather the Father of the Spirit. But this realization of knowledge did not come until about a week before I boarded this ship. Soon the Spirit, I pray, will be fully alive and the old life will be fully decayed.