A Boat Sets Off

Sea swells undulated ominously. The boat was small with 102 souls aboard. A few animals were on the manifest, two cows, two goats and a dog or two. Some cats as well. Men, women and children. Plus crew. The boat seemed large at the time, but history tells the truer story of context.

The year was 1620. The harbor was Plymouth, England.

Months later – storms and calms weathered apace – the little boat nudged into calm waters not far from land. Slowly they crept forward until reaching a likely anchorage. A small boat was lowered and a landing group carefully edged toward land. Upon a rock they stepped, small for the historic moment, but a rock of substance nonetheless.

From one Plymouth to the new one, a movement was said to start.

The movement, of course, had already started many years before as other brave souls settled in Florida and Virginia and other points on the south coast of what has become the USA. Many of those stalwarts did not survive ordeals; but some did. A beginning was seeded for history to tell.

To the north, Plymouth became a settlement, and then a larger community as the region took form. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had begun. A culture was forming, from one in England to one in America, made up of different points of view and diversity. As years went by the diversity grew as newcomers joined the region and added to talents, skills and cultures. It grew some more and morphed into a vibrant colony of trade with other regions and the old world. Invention of materials at hand and need for sustenance and well-being demanded such invention.

A society took shape; governance, too; ways and means of living in community proffered the way forward to what has become a national heritage. It came from many, not a few. It came of courage to try, to begin again, and survive the unknown. The new world became an invention of all.

Sometimes I wonder if we truly appreciate those efforts of our ancestors? Do we feel what they must have felt to live out the experiment that became America?

If so, we ought not act as we now do – twitter, facebook or website magnifying the ugly side of our life together. Such energy would better be spent on building up what we yearn for together as a people. Kinda like our ancestors did. Yearn. And build. 

Like all the boatpeople that followed from places like Cuba, Mexico, Vietnam, Laos and so many more?

July 24, 2018