Everyday Ignatian is a series written by guest contributors, chronicling their daily lives and experiences through the lens of Ignatian spirituality.
“When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you.”
I would wager a safe bet that those opening words were not just read but rather instinctively sung in your head. This Disney tune has unwittingly shaped our understanding of stars and desire for generations. As I approach the young, but not SO young age of 40, I’ve found that the childhood notion of wishing or desiring simply isn’t enough. In adulthood we encounter not just desire but the process of discernment. Asking ourselves what we actually want is no easy task, and it is most effectively done in the company of God and others.
At the outset of prayer, Ignatius encourages us to name our desire. My early education was often focused on using the etymology of words to help better understand the meaning of any given text. That word desire is derived from the Latin phrase “de sidere” meaning literally “from the stars.” I don’t know if this was in mind when the famous tune was composed for Disney, but the origin of the phrase and the contained meaning of that word desire have been impossible for me to ignore ever since I learned of it.
When I reflect on my life thus far and how discernment played a path in its trajectory, I come across the peaks and valleys that are the hallmarks of most of us who do a thorough examination of their life. My childhood fascination with all things maritime, although cultivated with summer trips “down the shore” in Southern New Jersey and family members serving in the U.S. Navy, was instinctive. The oceans and the ships that sailed on them were fascinating on their own and instilled an attraction that was impossible to ignore. There was an indescribable feeling of peace and belonging for me that derived from the water’s elemental and historical significance. I never really considered that it could hold a career path other than military service, so when I decide on where to go for college and what to major in, life on the water was no longer a realistic piece of my discernment process.
Yet in my moments of leisure there was always this desire to absorb books, documentaries, movies and other media that were set on ships and the sea. Shrugging the subject off as a novelty, I threw myself into studying history, hoping to one day become an archaeologist like my childhood mythic hero Indiana Jones. In hindsight it should serve as no surprise that dissatisfaction in my initial postcollege job led me into a renewed discernment process spurred on by a friend posing me this simple discernment question: “You seem so unhappy. If you could do anything in your life without limitations, what would it be?” Such a simple but direct question generated my instinctive desire: “I would work on the water.” This “cannonball moment” led me to volunteering on a museum ship, to a job as a deckhand on a tugboat, on to maritime college, and then to over a decade as a professional mariner working as a captain and pilot.
In my maritime career, I oftentimes had to shed any romantic notion of the stars to see them as purely a means for navigation. Without belaboring the explanation, I’m sure you’ve all seen films and TV shows set at sea where a sea captain is using a funny looking instrument called a sextant to look at the stars or the sun to find the position of his ship. What you don’t see in those scenes are the incredible labor-intensive calculations that are required to figure out what those measurements actually translate into on a nautical chart. As someone for whom math was never a strong skill, the involved calculations made celestial navigation class a living nightmare. At the end of every measurement and calculation there was yet another until you reached port. Even then, the planning began for the next voyage’s navigation challenges. In hindsight, that class, like my life to that point, metaphorically reflected a simple concept, but one that is most challenging: Life and discerning our purpose within is not only difficult, but ongoing.
What I truly want in my life has been a question that I’ve been struggling with in recent weeks. My well-discerned and satisfying career ran afoul of medical complications from an accident that brought my life as a mariner to a screeching and unexpected halt. Venturing forth onto the job market again, with all its structural uncertainties aside, means re-discerning a path forward. In my Ignatian training to date, I hadn’t adequately prepared myself for reevaluating something I had taken a lifetime to figure out. Attempting to discern how such a life translates into a new career, I am left not only with the question of what do I want to do with my life, but walking hand in hand the two questions of: What do I need to do to support my family? And What can I do at my age, stage and with my education? Not quite as simple as “anything your heart desires.”
Since I can once again look up to stars for their beauty and not with any hint of maritime navigational purpose, I wonder again what they are telling me. I’m left thinking about — if the stars are the language metaphor for where our desires come from — how much they vary in size, shape and scope. Moreover, the sheer volume of stars and how seemingly inconsequential any of us are is a very humbling exercise to say the least. When put alongside the vastness of the universe, the problems of my questions can seem very small indeed, causing me to remember the words of Christ telling me not to worry so much as it’s all in God’s hands (Luke 12).
If I were to think about my whole life as a metaphorical ship at sea and not the actual ones I’ve worked on, I’m in the midst of a major course correction. Discernment is a constant challenge, and one that takes constant adjustment, measurement and calculation — the same as the work of any maritime cadet learning navigation. Yet the stars, with all their variety, also mirror the varieties of human stars that can guide us in that decision-making. Longtime friends and family shine brightest in their luminescence of insight, able to reflect back my own skills and talents in ways I wouldn’t readily notice. What the stars of my life tell me, not unlike the actual ones I would look to for either navigation or beauty, is that the darkest night of uncertainty is never without the light of their guidance. In the emptiness of the ocean, the stars can guide, but only if you’re willing to do the heavy work of calculating their meaning. Of course, behind all these stars exists the one true unseen light. It is he who illuminates the hearts of those mortals that love and guide us into the safest harbor of them all — no matter the route we take.
