For fifteen years, the Swedish navy hunted Soviet submarines in its own coastal waters. It dropped depth charges, drew hundreds of reporters, and eventually sent an angry letter to the Kremlin. The culprit turned out to be herring, communicating in a way we will politely call digestive. It’s a very funny story. It’s also a serious one, about fear, about telling the truth when it’s embarrassing, and about the small, unheroic kind of courage that keeps a community together in the dark.
Mike Ryan is a second-year Master of Divinity student at Yale Divinity School and a chaplaincy intern at Connecticut College. This past summer he completed Clinical Pastoral Education at Bridgeport Hospital. His path into ministry runs through two years working with refugees in Southern Italy and more than a year as a chaplain at the Utah State Prison, where he helped open up religious and spiritual programming for people of many traditions and none. He’s glad to be back at Shoreline.