One of our favorite family movies is “Master and Commander” – a battle tale of tall ships during the Napoleonic era, replete with a dashing performance by Russell Crowe and a score that features Yo-Yo Ma on the cello. 

I LOVE that movie!

As in most of our favorite family movies, the story at the heart of “Master and Commander” is the main attraction: good guys and bad guys; a quest bigger than any one character’s capacity; extraordinary obstacles overcome in astonishing ways; and a conclusion that delivers satisfaction because it rings so true to life.

“Master and Commander” takes place almost entirely aboard the ship “Surprise” – a fictional frigate of the Royal Navy circa 1804. The backdrop for most scenes is the blue of sky and water, ever in motion, as the ship pursues its foe ‘round the Horn and to the Galapagos Islands.

But at one point, the “Surprise” is becalmed… helplessly stuck in the middle of the Horse Latitudes (a real nautical place around the equator, where fickle winds wreak havoc with sailing ships. The name derives from the sad fate of horses on board ships whose supply of fresh water ran out while becalmed there). 

Caught in the doldrums

The sailors’ term for these circumstances: “caught in the doldrums.” And such circumstances change everything. The cinematographic palette shifts. Cool teal and inky-chill indigo evaporate, replaced by burnished orange and dull brown. Perpetual movement ceases. The crew broils under a ferocious sun – sweaty, sullen, inexorably still. Crowe’s character, up to this point un-daunt-able, laments, “I can harness the wind, but I ain’t it’s damned Creator,” in a voice husky with despair.

Tension builds, as the idle and purpose-less crew become ever more aggressively discontented. The ship’s close-knit community, which has withstood devastation in battle and near-destruction during a terrifying storm, begins to buckle under the banal burdens of heat and boredom. 

Violence and tragedy eventually shatter the stasis. One has the uncomfortable sense that nothing else could.

I have watched “Master and Commander” multiple times over the years, but I confess that I’ve never thought as much about the becalmed scene in the doldrums as I have recently. 

Everything about it – the stuck-ness, the festering malcontent, the inertia interlaced with a sick premonition of impending doom – is mirrored in the newspaper I read. 

If I am honest, much of it is also mirrored in my own heart and mind.

A pandemic, poised to become endemic but still requiring new (contradictory) counsel and fresh (conflicting) “mandates”, ad infinitum. And still killing people, too.

The now-entrenched patterns of isolation and alienation which the pandemic + the present political class have exacerbated, ad infinitum. 

Wars and rumors of wars serving as the bass line for the incessant fingernails-on-the-blackboard melody of crisis that can no longer be experienced as crisis because we all ran out of adrenaline 18 months ago. 

Perhaps worst of all, no escape. 

Just as there was nowhere to go for the sailors becalmed in the Horse Latitudes, there is no way out for us, either. Our collective stuck-ness is global in scope. 

The whole world is stuck in the doldrums – simultaneously, but not together. 

Soul-Sapping Stasis 

It strikes me that being “becalmed” is as lethal for landlubbers as it was for the HMS Surprise. 

All humans are like those fictitious sailors in that we thrive on purpose, action, adventure, comradery, and shared goals. 

Also like them, enduring extended periods of paralysis over which we have no control can render us prisoners of our own tempers – eager to pick a fight, if only to have something to do. 

(I don’t claim to read the minds of Messieurs Putin, Xi, or Jong-Un, but doesn’t this principle potentially apply to all three?)

Biblical alternatives

The prophet Ezekiel was never becalmed on a ship in the Horse Latitudes, but he did face situations in which hopeless stuck-ness was a consistent circumstance.

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 

Ezekiel faced a situation at least as daunting as any headline of today – and lethal stuck-ness even more profound than a pandemic. 

Then God said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

So I prophesied as I had been commanded… “

God puts His own words into Ezekiel’s mouth, and Ezekiel complies with God’s command. 

Already Ezekiel is on my toes: 

Am I listening to God’s Word? 

Am I speaking it over my stuck circumstances?

“… and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then God said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” ¹⁰ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

(Ezekiel 37:7 – 10)

Notice with me the ultimate remedy that God provides for Ezekiel’s situation: wind. 

The breath of God, called “from the four winds”, miraculously animates the army of the long-dead. The valley of dry bones is literally blown into life.

This connection between the breath of God and life-giving wind appears throughout scripture. 

In Creation, the Spirit moves, wind-like, stirring up the waters. (Genesis 1:2) 

Multiple times, Job describes the breath of God blowing and bestowing life, wisdom, hope. (Job 26:13, 32:8, 33:4). 

Paul describes scripture itself as “God-breathed.” (2 Timothy 3:16 – 17). 

Most famously, this Holy Spirit breath-as-wind gets Peter out of his personal spiritual doldrums and births the church at the same time, in Acts, chapter 2:

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

(Acts 2:1 – 4)

This scene captivates the imagination like no movie can: the Holy Spirit – the breath of God – rushing in to save not just the day, not just the dead, but ALL who receive and believe! 

In light of Pentecost, I have to acknowledge that there is No Such Thing as the Horse Latitudes in the Kingdom of God. There can’t be, because the Holy Spirit never stops breathing – never stops blowing.

Jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3:8, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

Jesus uses the same word for “wind” as He uses for “Spirit” – in the Hebrew, “ruach” and in the Greek, “pneuma.” 

No surprise that that word also names “breath.”

The point is this: believers in Christ, born again in the Spirit, are filled with the breath of God – carried along by Holy Spirit wind – never, ever left to rot in the doldrums. And if we feel becalmed, abandoned, helplessly stuck, what is required is a change of perspective rather than a change of circumstances!

How do I know?

A famous maritime incident in scripture, which involved not becalming but rather a besetting storm. 

The apostles were terrified; Jesus was asleep. 

“(The disciples) went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm.”

(Matthew 8:25 – 26)

Jesus rebukes them for their fear BEFORE Jesus stills the storm. Why? Because when God is in the boat with you, you are safe. Period.

The doldrums are dangerous for Christians for the same reason the storm was dangerous for Jesus’s disciples in the boat: because they distract us from the reality of our circumstances, so beautifully articulated by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:38 – 39: “…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Truth Is…

No matter what it looks like, no matter how we feel – we are not stuck. We are borne on the breath of God. 

No matter what it looks like, no matter how we feel – there is nothing to be afraid of. God is in the boat, with us.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

(Romans 15:13) 

And, as they say in the Navy, “Fair winds and following seas.” 

Amen.