I chose the name Chaplain’s Blog instinctively, and at first it seemed merely functional. That, after all, is what it is: I’m a chaplain, and I’m writing a blog.
Why, one might wonder, am I chaplain, and not a vicar? The answer is because I am in Europe, and the Diocese in Europe is outside the parish system: priests appointed to parishes are either vicars or rectors; priests who are appointed to something other than a parish – to schools, hospitals, or in the armed forces – are all known, rather generically, as chaplains.
But there’s another side to Chaplain’s Blog which I stumbled across later, and which explains why, for all its seeming flat-footedness, it fits; there are echoes of, and an assonance with, a Captain’s Log. A captain’s log is the sea-bound memory of a voyage, that conjures up images of winds that whisper through the rigging, stars that steer the night, and the moods of the restless ocean. It is both compass and confession, where the voyage outside is traced alongside the voyage within, and where each entry becomes a small lantern hung against the vast dark of the sea.