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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Fr Dermot Preston

The Compass

Good morning.

In mid-June 1944, my Father, a young soldier of 18 years of age, embarked onto a ship on the river Thames in London. Destination: Normandy.

D-Day had happened a week before, and my Father was part of the 79th Armoured Division being moved into Europe to consolidate the gains in France. He remembers their transport as an ocean liner – not a warship, but a converted civilian ship.

While en route, at the outer reaches of the Thames my Dad noted an unexpected manoeuvre: the ship didn’t start for Normandy – it started cruising in a circle. Then, after a while, he noticed the ship change tack – still not to France, but moving from a clockwise to an anticlockwise circle.

How peculiar.

My Dad, being of a curious disposition, asked one of the Naval Officers what was happening, and the Mariner explained that as the ship had spent its entire life travelling the trans Atlantic route, east-to-west, west-to-east, back-&-forth its magnetic compass was flabby & quite useless for the complex task of navigating to a set point on the Normandy coast, so they were having to re-calibrate the magnet by going round and round in circles.

The image is useful. At first, life experiences can be fresh & novel, but after a while I get into a groove, my habits take over my inner compass. I can lose flexibility, get caught in invisible tramlines and, without my noticing it, I lose my ability to manoeuvre.

Lord, look into my heart and see the intolerances that might be setting in. Allow your Holy Spirit to enter-in and re-calibrate my soul.

Amen.

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