The good ship Excelsior is a fine ship; she has weathered many storms. From stem to stern, she’s still strong and true. In spite of some rust and a multitude of scrapes and dings and dents acquired from her many crossings, she always arrives at her precise destination. Always. Not sometimes; not if she’s lucky; not by accident; not if the weather holds and the seas remain calm. The good ship Excelsior confidently sails to her destination each and every time. The reason?
When she was first launched from the dockyards where she was built, her captain had the good sense to program her properly, with the coordinates toward which she would faithfully sail. The captain was precise and positive. Exact. Longitude this; latitude that. And from the first time she set sail, the good ship Excelsior became more and more confident that she would always arrive safely at the shore her captain had plotted. Storms were many. There were delays and disappointments. There were high tides and low tides. Unfailing, however, the good ship Excelsior sailed on toward her programmed destination.
Of this subject, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a poet and New Thought author ( 1850 – 1919) expressed her thoughts through her following well-known poem:
The Winds of Fate
One ship drives east and another drives west
With the self-same winds that blow;
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
That tells them the way to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the winds of fate
As we voyage along through life;
‘Tis the set of the soul
That decides its goal
And not the calm or the strife.
Now, we the good ships–Robert and Sophie, Ivan, Anna, Stefan, Yiang, and Lucas—may ask ourselves if we, too, have programs. Yes, most definitely we do! They were given–unbidden–by our parents and teachers and siblings and friends; and we in our naivety most often believed that the shore they sailed toward must be the self-same shore for us. In truth, however, we were always free to change our destination; free to plot our own coordinates; free to realize our own way. And what is our ship as we sail this sea called life? Our Excelsior is our body/mind; and our higher self–our spirit–its captain.
Dare to dream (and care for one another).
With heartfelt regards,
Art
Copyright © – 2020 – R. Arthur Russell
P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. May it help you in your spiritual journey. 
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