Author Archives: frdavid11

Another poem and another opportunity to share with Sailors things and ideas for which, perhaps, they haven’t had much time or opportunity. It tickles me that I was allowed to broadcast poetry on the public address system on a warship. I don’t know how many young people read Robert Frost’s poems in school anymore, but,Continue reading “Daily Prayer, 3 February”

Ever since chaplains have gone to sea we’ve been expected to help offer education and training to the crew. Being what the Navy calls a “Religious Professional” I naturally include some religious education whenever I can, as I did in the following prayer. I updated the numbers, but left it otherwise unchanged, because I thinkContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 2 February”

One of the principle developments that helped the US Navy win the war in the Pacific during WWII was underway replenishments and refueling. Ships could stay on station longer because the gas station came to them. We’re still the only navy that does it routinely while underway. The skill came in handy for deployments duringContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 1 February”

Back to baseball. I really enjoyed writing baseball stories because, in addition to being my favorite sport, I could access baseball-reference.com from the ship, and there are so many stories in the numbers. This story comes more from the date, though it required some data research, and it illustrates a method I enjoyed using. IContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 31 January”

Because I have a captive audience when giving the evening prayer I try to respect people of other faiths and not make explicitly Christian references (Which is why Jesus’ name doesn’t appear in the prayers, though I find others of His names to use.) I also can’t take for granted that the Sailors listening areContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 30 January”

Before I was deployed with ships I pastored a small group of Orthodox Christians stationed in Okinawa, Japan, where we had our own dedicated Orthodox Christian chapel as part of the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps facility there. Instead of daily evening prayers, like during shipboard life, I shared weekly devotional thoughts with my congregation viaContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 27 January”

It didn’t take the crew long to catch on that I’m a baseball fan. I do have more stories from Major League Baseball than other sports, but to be fair most of our deployments were during baseball season, so the “on this day in history” website I often used for prompts had more baseball itemsContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 26 January”

A Sailor’s time at sea is spent largely on two efforts, repair and maintenance of the ship and practicing how to fight the ship. To the latter end drills are conducted almost daily, both combat drills to exercise the weapons systems and the Sailors who operate them, and damage control drills to exercise the crew’sContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 25 January”

From time to time I would read to the crew from some of my favorite poems. They would have to be either relatively short or I would omit portions to fit the time allotted time (which the XO on my second ship reminded me once or twice was longer than he’d expected.) If there wasContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 24 January”