Stu Reininger on a Life Spent at Sea

Hello Guideposts readers. My name is Stu Reininger.

I’ve been asked about the difference spiritually about being on the water and on this mountain. My life is on the water, I’m a seaman. My work is on the water. Up to relatively recently, I’d be anywhere from three weeks to a month on the water. I delivered boats for a living.

And the sea is very, very important. It’s very important to me, it’s part of me. And one of the reasons I go to sea is, again, because I feel this closeness to things that are so much greater than all of us could ever be, and all the things that are important in this world become as nothing on a good day at sea. And on a bad day at sea, in a storm or when the weather is rambunctious, truly nothing is important except the sea at that moment and myself at that moment.

So when I’m up on a mountain, I don’t experience the same things I experience at sea. It’s more of a serenity, although on the good times at sea, I feel a serenity also. But the thing that is very similar to the two, it makes me realize that there are factors in this world that are so much beyond us—God, if you wish to call it—that we will never understand, but that we, in my opinion, that we will always have to answer to someday.

Because an earth and a world as beautiful and as mysterious and as grand that encompasses the sea and mountains, it’s impossible to even consider that this was something that occurred accidentally.