Tight Ships and Shipwrecks

My friend Cat posted this yesterday. I smiled and identified with it…

I was encouraged to ‘run a tight ship’ at work, leading a well-managed organization, where everything was organized and efficient, everyone in the ‘crew’ knowing their role and responsibilities… all should be ship-shape and in order.

As parents with three children we were expected to run a tight ship – ensuring that the children were disciplined and well-fed, the house was clean, the bills were always paid on time…

Living in Lowestoft with its sea-faring traditions, a ‘tight ship’ could refer to… taut ropes and rigging, ensuring that the ship’s sails are set correctly… a water-tight ship… a captain whose crew knows their duties and performs them precisely.

From 2003 to 2023 Huw Edwards was the lead presenter of BBC News at Ten. He resigned from the BBC earlier this year during a police investigation into child pornography offences to which he pleaded guilty.

The judge sentencing him yesterday remarked that the former broadcaster’s ‘long-earned reputation’ was ‘in tatters’. A BBC spokesperson said ‘He has betrayed not just the BBC, but audiences who put their trust in him.’

An apparently tight ship has fallen apart and become shipwreck… The media love to find shipwrecks…

Musing… Rather than running a tight ship, I often find myself either part of Cat’s pirate ship, or in a sinking ship that may become Huw Edwards’ shipwreck…

Yesterday I enjoyed reading Selina Stone. Describing the importance of the Eucharist she says:

‘…we experience a community that celebrates all people regardless of race, class, gender or sexuality; we discover that love can be restored between a parent and a long lost child; or a person comes to faith again.’

She writes of reconciliation, hope and forgiveness that’s stronger than hate, suffering and oppression… creating a tight ship, a community not built on discipline and organisation, but on friend-ship, relation-ship, fellow-ship and wor-ship – that welcomes and includes all – even mutinous pirates or those whose ship is sinking or wrecked.