Our Chance Encounter
I was alone in the boatyard, with my back to the wind, on a chilly fall afternoon. The sailing season was ending and I was trying to scrub clean a dark smudge marring the glistening white surface of the hull of my 18’ Hunter sailboat before dry docking it until spring. The unsightly blemish was a conspicuous reminder that I needed more practice docking. Out of nowhere, a young man suddenly appeared and hesitantly approached me. He was in his late 20s, clean-cut, with a neatly trimmed beard.
It was not unusual for a passerby to stop at the boatyard and inquire about yacht club membership or activities. But this visitor had something else in mind. When I offered to help, he introduced himself as R J and politely asked whether it would be all right if he videotaped the river’s waves as they lapped against the side of the dock.
I wondered whether he found the rhythmic movement of the waves fascinating as I found their sound.
“Sure,” I said. “Any particular reason?”
He explained that he was preparing a presentation for a youth ministry program. I assumed he was working on a motivational piece intended to strengthen young people’s faith in God.
As R J and his colleague, Dan, prepared for the filming, we continued our conversation. Since I assumed the video would carry a religious message, I told him that he might be interested in the significance of the name RUACH, painted prominently on the side of my boat.
He nodded, affirmatively.
I obliged, “Ruach is a Hebrew word found throughout the Bible.”
“Really?” he replied, asking what the word meant, as I expected he would.
I explained that ruach has a range of meanings, most basically “wind,” “breath,” and “spirit.” The Hebrew term is particularly interesting because these meanings are not merely coincidental; they reflect a conceptual relationship among wind, breath, and the animating force of life.
I told him that in the biblical creation account, ruach appears in the description of the Divine presence hovering over the primordial waters. The term subsequently assumes broader theological significance, referring not only to physical wind but also to spirit, vitality, disposition, and the animating force within a person.
R J was enthralled; he had listened attentively.
Upon the conclusion of my explanation, he shared what he had learned from his minister about creation. He explained that, according to the biblical account, God brought creation into existence through speech—through the divine word. Humanity, however, was fashioned differently: God formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him.
He went on to tell me that he was affiliated with an Assemblies of God church and embraced its evangelical theology, including the belief that the Messiah would one day return.
I responded in what I suppose was a distinctly Jewish fashion—agreeing and disagreeing with him simultaneously.
I told him that I, too, was awaiting the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah). But I added that, for me, it would be the first time.
It was my oblique way of informing him I was Jewish.
Dan, R J’s “silent partner,” was busy arranging the video equipment in preparation for the shoot. When R J turned to lend him a hand, I found myself reflecting on the unexpected nature of our conversation.
There we were—a Christian and a Jew—standing on a boat dock and discussing two different theological understandings of the Messiah, creation, and the nature of God.
Our religious traditions were different, yet the conversation did not become contentious. Instead, it revealed something deeper: the possibility of intellectual and spiritual engagement across theological boundaries. We shared a common biblical heritage, a belief in the significance of faith, and a conviction that human existence is not merely an accidental consequence of an indifferent universe.
Standing together on that dock, each of us was anchored in a different religious tradition. Yet both traditions had provided us with a framework through which to understand life, morality, purpose, and our relationship to something greater than ourselves.
Neither of us was attempting to convert the other. We were simply exploring our respective beliefs, listening, questioning, and discovering points of connection without pretending that our theological differences did not exist.
And that was what struck me most. In an age in which religious belief is sometimes dismissed as intellectually primitive or psychologically comforting but irrational, here were two men who regarded faith not as an impediment to thought but as an important component of how we understood the world.
We were both, in our own ways, puzzled by the certainty with which some outspoken atheists dismiss belief in God. Their conclusions seemed to us no less philosophical—and no less dependent upon assumptions about the nature of existence—than the religious convictions they criticized.
My contemplation of these larger theological questions was abruptly interrupted when Dan called out:
“We’re ready to shoot!”
And just like that, our theological voyage came to an end.
R J and Dan turned their attention to their cameras and the river, while I returned to the less profound task of scrubbing my boat.
Yet the encounter remained with me.
It was the coincidence of the moment: a Christian searching for waves to illustrate a message about faith, and a Jew standing beside a boat named RUACH—a Hebrew word encompassing wind, breath, and spirit—waiting to explain its meaning.
It was simply one of those unexpected encounters that seem ordinary when they occur but acquire significance in retrospect.
I prefer to think it was something more.
The river supplied the wind. The boat supplied the name. R J supplied the questions. And, for a moment on a chilly fall afternoon, two men from different religious traditions found themselves engaged in a conversation about faith, creation, and the enduring human search for meaning. It was a chance encounter I will never forget.
Something tells me that R J will remember it as well.
