DAD IS AT THE HELM

At the beginning of 1925, at the suggestion of his ecclesiastical superiors, Rohden left for his first trip to Europe to improve his studies in Philosophy and Theology, in fact, a dream that had been nurtured for years and it was with deep satisfaction that he received that opportunity.

The following account is of an incident that occurred during the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean which put his thoughts on the question of faith, a feeling that acts as a vector, a bridge between the desire to achieve something or an ideal, and the materialization of this feeling.

Says Blaise Pascal that: “faith is different from proof; the proof is of human interest, but faith is a gift from God. In faith, there is enough light for those who want to believe in faith and enough to blind those who have no faith at all.”

“My life experience has come to confirm that a thought or desire long nourished in the subconscious and firmly believed eventually becomes a concrete reality on the objective level. It descends, as it were, from the heights of the purely ideal world into the real-world. Real? Not! Before it materializes in a materially tangible form, it is already real, universally, and ideally real, but in this prematerial form of reality, it is not perceivable by our senses. It is a mistake to identify the perceivable with the real, as empirical school and materialism in general do. If the ideal were not real before it materialized, it would never become real. There is no transition from the unreal to the real; there are only various stages of the real, its amorphous or universal state, and its materialized or individual state.

Now, to believe in the vast power of the subconscious, in the reality of a thing, is to force that thing down from the ideal to the material level. “Everything is possible to the one who has faith,” said the greatest of realists…”

And Rohden follows describing part of his trip and in particular an incident during the crossing of the Bay of Biscay, an incident that shows where faith materializes.

“The ship we were travelling on had to face in the Gulf of Biscay, a storm that mocked all description and which, in the eyes of the passengers almost sank it. As the day dawned, we realized that the 16,000 tons of our German steam named “Wesser” to curve madly over shifting mountains of water, or descended with a gurgling noise into huge liquid valleys, sometimes raising the keel to the clouds, sometimes lifting propellers and rudder out of the water and noisily shaking that iron monster like a ridiculous nutshell, at the mercy of the raging elements. The ominous howls of the storm, the wild roar of the white waves, the shrill hiss of wind through masts and rigging, the cavernous snores of chimneys, the gruesome creaking of the machines with full pressure - all of which made our floating island a macabre hell.

How fragile are the most powerful works of human technique when facing the powers of Nature!

Since I was a child, I always liked storms, torrential rains, lightning and thunder ... Something great awakened within me, in the midst of Nature's greatness ... What a strange affinity there would be between the microcosm of my human self and the macrocosm of that stupendous universe? ... “Gefaehrlich leben” (living dangerously), said Nietzsche, is the most fascinating essence of human life, the intoxicating elixir of an intensely lived existence ...

To better appreciate the grand spectacle, I managed to climb to the bridge - without first being caught by a rush of saltwater that knocked me into the captain’s cabin, which was supported by massive glass walls.

In the midst of the almost general desertion of the passengers taking refuge in the cabins, I found a little boy of five to six years on deck, quietly contemplating the storm and humming a low song; from time to time, he would joke at the sea, as if the sea were a mischievous kitten and I asked him if he was afraid of this great noise.

“Nein,” he replied martially. “Papa ist am Steuer” - no, Dad is at the helm.

He was the son of the first pilot!

It seemed to me that this child, calm and tranquil in the midst of the storm, was the embodiment of the faith and trust of a man who, through the storms of life, relies wholly on God's Providence. To this child the father was omnipotent; winds and rough seas could do nothing against him; besides his father, he felt perfectly safe; he could even sing carefree and challenge the adverse elements. “Dad is at the helm” was for this boy the most complete profession of faith in invincible power. “Men of little faith”, was the most frequent reproach Jesus made to his disciples. Faith is the way to all greatness, while lack of faith is the way to all bankruptcies.

True faith is an intimate experience, an intuitive comprehension and knowing, an invasion or outbreak of the divine world in man, like a vertical line that comes from unknown heights and goes to mysterious depths; faith is a direct contact between God and man, however inexplicable that contact may be. Everything before this faith is, as it were, horizontal, human. On this preliminary level, it is the man who acts and produces, but when this mysterious vertical line cuts across the horizontal, it is God who acts and produces, supposed that man has become receptive to this invasion of the divine world.

How often the naive wisdom of the simple man eclipses the proud science of the scholars! The wise man knows that he knows nothing - the ignorant ignore its own ignorance... It is always better to know your lack of knowledge to ignore your ignorance... We never learn better than when we are convinced that our knowledge is just a drop of water in the ocean of our ignorance...”