Rick Kennedy - Winds of Santa Ana: Pilgrim Stories of the California Bight

Winds of Santa Ana

Pilgrim Stories of the California Bight

Rick Kennedy

winds of santa ana

Pilgrim Stories of the California Bight

Copyright 2022 Rick Kennedy. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, W. th Ave., Suite , Eugene, OR 97401 .

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paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-3613-7

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-9402-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-9403-8

April 18, 2022 9:11 AM

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973 , , 1984 , 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB) New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960 , , 1977 , 1995 , 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Other Books by Rick Kennedy

Aristotelian and Cartesian Logic at Harvard: Mortons System of Logick and Brattles Compendium of Logick ( 1995 ).

Faith at State: A Handbook for Christians at Secular Universities ( 1995 , reprint 2002 ).

Student Notebooks at Colonial Harvard: Manuscripts and Educational Practice, 1650 1740 . Co-written with Thomas Knoles and Lucia Zaucha Knoles ( 2003 ).

A History of Reasonableness: Testimony and Authority in the Art of Thinking ( 2004 ).

Jesus, History, and Mount Darwin: An Academic Excursion, ( 2008 )

The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather ( 2015 ).

John and Acts, vol. of Cotton Mathers Biblia Americana , vols. Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann, general editors. Co-edited with Harry Clark Maddux and Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos ( 2023 ).

This amazing personal account fuses a maritime perspective with a considerable historical knowledge of the region from the Spanish period to the present. Kennedy presents his subject in an innovative spiritual light that changed my view of what it meant to grow up in the fertile religious environment of Southern California.

Jarrell C. Jackman,

Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, Retired CEO

Narrated with the salty wisdom of a storytelling sailor and the seasoned eye of a historian, Winds of Santa Ana offers an abundance of riches for the reader. With a revitalizing, evangelical consciousnessdistinctively Californian and dynamically eruditeKennedys journey as a sailor-scholar aboard his beloved boat, Boethius, is a hopeful consolation for our generation, and a good reminder of our theological roots. This book is both timely and delightful.

Karen An-Hwei Lee,

Wheaton College

There is no better guide to the California Bight, its natural beauty, human history, and spiritual potential than Rick Kennedy, a pilgrim who has sailed its shores for decades. Read this book and see its wonders through the eyes of Ricks heart. You will never be the same.

Douglas Sweeney,

Beeson Divinity School

Kennedy is not only a gifted academic historian, he is also a pilgrim-sailor with the head of a philosopher, the heart of a Christian mystic, and the soul of a poet. These traits are wonderfully on display in this imaginative and enchanting book.... Winds of Santa Ana nurtures the spiritual imagination. It is a book for those longing for a thicker description of nature, the past, and life than the reductive methodologies of the modern academy offer.

Donald A. Yerxa,

former Editor, Historically Speaking

This book will be appealing to readers on several scores: those interested in the environmental, maritime history of the San Diego area and those interested in how a noted Christian historian weaves the religious history of the region into a unique connection to the sea and the vocation of sailing.

Ronald A. Wells,

Calvin University, emeritus

To sail into the waters of Rick Kennedys memoir, Winds of Santa Ana , is to voyage with a most affable, engaging captain. Part philosopher, part sage, part poet, Kennedy approaches his audience as a friend in his invitation to apprehend rich interior and exterior seas and landscapes.

Kay Harkins,

author of Queen of the Leaves: A Memoir of Lost and Found

Nobody tells the story of Southern California like Rick Kennedy. Winds of Santa Ana expounds his own experience of the placein his case, the bight, seen from his nautical, sojourning, historians eyes looking at the coast of Southern California from the water.... Seen through his vessel Boethius and accompanied by the personified Philosophia for the journey, this book is a true love letter to the Southern California coast.

Jason S. Sexton,

UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Kennedys ruminations on the California Bight present a Christian spiritual topography of the Los Angeles Basin and its environs.... This sailor-pilgrim reflects on his vocation, the evangelical cause, and the interplay of place and faith in the Bight. This fine memoir uses Kennedys life journey and evocations of the Mediterranean to describe the islands and coastlines, winds and waves as the means and fruits of Christian yearning for Gods presence in the world.

Glenn Sanders,

King University

Dedicated to Harold Kirker, Jeffrey Burton Russell, and Harold Drake Professors of History at UC Santa Barbara

You who go down to the sea,

you creatures in the sea,

you islands, and all who live among them,

sing a new song to the Lord.

Isaiah :

He makes the clouds his chariot;

He walks upon the wings of the wind;

He makes the winds his messengers.

Psalm :

Ask the beasts, and let them teach you;

And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you.

Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you;

And let the fish of the sea declare to you.

Who among all these does not know

That the hand of the Lord has done this,

In whose hand is the life of every living thing,

And the breath of all mankind?

Job :

Ask the beauty of the earth,

Ask the beauty of the sea,

Ask the beauty of the air amply spread around everywhere.

Ask the beauty of the sky,

Ask the serried ranks of the stars,

Ask the sun making the day glorious with its bright beams,

Ask the moon tempering the darkness of the following night

with its shining rays,

Ask the animals that move in the waters, that amble about on dry land,

and fly in the air.

Their souls are hidden.

Their bodies evident.

They all answer, 'Here we are! Look! We're beautiful!'

St. Augustine, Easter Sermon,

The California Bight (NASA with labels added by the author)

Investigate with Wonder, Speculate with Devotion

B eginning sharply in the north at Point Conception and curving down to the estuary of the Tijuana River is the Bight of California. By definition, a bight is a geographical feature too wide and open to be a bay, but still a distinctive cut into a coast. Californias bight is more than just geographically distinct. The cartography and collective histories of this coast and the islands it embraces point to a unifying character, a cultural identity, an underlying ecology. The waters of the Bight, the Santa Barbara Channel, Santa Monica Bay, San Pedro Channel, and the Gulf of Santa Catalina, are more benign than waters to the north or south. Winds in the region often cycle like an eddy on the edge of a curving river rather than blow full force like a trade wind coming off the worlds largest ocean. It is hard to be an atheist here. Notions of purposelessness have to struggle to survive in a place so beautiful. The California Bight is distinctly revelatory, sacramental, and hopeful.