"HERE is a way" - The Logic of One Pilgrim

 A couple of Cushman-Plymouth souvenirs.

My people have been in this land for almost four hundred years. Yes, my ancestors came over on the Mayflower. And after starvation and suffering from exposure and all kinds of suffering, the “Pilgrims” at Plymouth found gratitude beneath their blanket of hardship. What WERE they thinking?!

We should care what they were thinking, because no other migration ever set into motion the wealth of Providential events we have seen on our continent over the centuries. Largely under-utilized before its “discovery” by Columbus, the New World soon provided much of the food, inventions and progress which blessed mankind ever since. We as Americans have lived and celebrated the greatest, most advanced and prosperous nation in human history. So it is easy to forget that it all had a very ugly start.

A full half of the pilgrims died the first year. Those who survived shared homesickness, starvation, exposure to the elements and unbearable grief.

There were no doctors, or stores or letters from home. The Natives watched from the treeline and pitied them. Soon they were bringing them essential help. The first miracle God provided was a Native American in this remote wilderness who spoke English, and who could and would help them get through those first months.

At the first harvest on their primitive plantation, they instinctively threw a festival of sorts, and invited their aboriginal neighbors over for a thanksgiving feast! WHAT were they thinking! They could have been easily massacred right then. But their faith was strong that the worst was behind them, and God was in charge. Strangely, hardship and mortality bring us closer to our Maker. Instead of cursing God for their painful saga, they were singing God's praises. This suggests that a happy, prosperous people (like us) will never grow towards God, but away from Him.

A short while later the pilgrims held their first worship service led by one of their elected shepherds, (and my ancestor) deacon Robert Cushman. Cushman had helped expedite their adventure and originally embarked with them on a separate ship, the “Speedwell” which almost sank, and was forced to turn back. He had just arrived from England with supplies and welcome news from their homes. And he gave them a prepared sermon, recognized as the first (recorded) sermon delivered on American soil, in December of 1621.

It was a warning to avoid self-pity and narcissism, or “self-love” as he called it, and he challenged them to think not of themselves but the ultimate success of the colony. Deacon Cushman commanded them to be heroes, and nothing less. And this is why: Cushman had looked down the road at their home in Europe. A great deal was at stake. He wrote in the dedication of his historic sermon this rationale...

“And if it should please God to punish his people, in the Christian countries of Europe (for their coldness, carnality, wanton abuse of the gospel, contention, etc.,) either by Turkish slavery, or by popish tyranny, which God forbid, yet if the time be come, or shall come (as who knoweth?) when Satan shall be let loose to cast out his floods against them, here is a way opened for such as have wings to fly into this wilderness...” He saw a grand strategy at work, and these pilgrims would serve an essential role... “ so a light may rise up in the dark.”

To Robert Cushman, the world was going to hell in a corrupted European handbasket, and the fate of Christian civilization (and thus mankind) could very well have rested in those hands which cupped this “candle in the wind” in the New World.

Robert Cushman was right about Europe... long before Napoleon and the so-called “Enlightenment” and apostasy became the backbone of European intellect. America did carry the ball for Christ for the next few hundred years... and it all started with great sacrifice and discipline like that in Plymouth.

In hindsight, most of us would agree that it was worth it. We are the most fortunate of peoples to live in a land established by God's hand-picked heroes of Faith. And there is no secret as to how they accomplished this amazing legacy. The slogan “In God We Trust” had deep origins rooted in blood and tears.

The pilgrims were not just a random assortment of boat passengers. Even from the beginning, they were representatives of two very different lots. The leaders and believers in Christ were called “Saints” and the rest of the people, workers and sailors, were “Strangers.” The pilgrims understood that they must partner with and work alongside strangers who did not share their beliefs or value system. They kept their faith and obeyed God and let Him sort things out. That partnership gave birth to the greatest nation on earth.

Today we must remember how and what and WHO got us where we are. Humbly. Gratefully. On this Thanksgiving, as our country slips into cynicism and self-sufficiency, Americans must ask themselves, if they want to enter the next chapter in our history without the guidance and support of a God who has blessed us so greatly... Because without Him we will be no better off than most other countries in the world. And they had a huge head-start on us, but can never match American exceptionalism. 

And unlike in Robert Cushman's paradigm, there is no next place to fly.

390 years ago... LOST & FOUND

It was 390 years ago that a disheveled, starving group of adventurers came ashore and began a treacherous ordeal at "Plimouth Plantation" that killed half their number in just several months. You know them as the "Pilgrims." I know them as my ancestors. As you celebrate Thanksgiving, an observance that was not officially recognized until hundreds of years later, you might enjoy learning some stuff, from a real Mayflower descendant, what your history teacher never told you.

Robert Cushman, my ancestor, was a church leader at an assembly of Separatists, English "Brownists" in exile, who met and worshipped at a church called the Green Gate in Holland. They were not a happy bunch. Cushman explained the conditions in Europe at the time... "The rent-taker lives on sweet morsels; but the rent-payer eats a dry crust often with watery eyes… many there are who get their living with bearing burdens; but more are fain to burden the land with their whole bodies. Multitudes get their means of life by prating; and so do numbers more by begging. Neither come these straits upon men always through intemperancy, ill husbandry and indiscretion, as some think, but even the most wise, sober and discreet of men go often to the wall, when they have done their best… Each man is fain to pluck his means, as it were, out of his neighbor’s throat. There is such pressing and oppressing, in town and country, about farms, trades, traffic & co; so as a man can hardly anywhere set up a trade, but he pull down two of his neighbors. Let us not thus oppress, straighten, and afflict one another! But seeing there is a spacious land, the way to which is the sea, we will end this difference in a day!"

(Robert Cushman, Reasons And Considerations Touching The Lawfulness of Removing Out Of England Into the Parts Of America.)

He was selected with another man named John Carver to go to King James and arrange passage to the New World, so they might enjoy freedom of religion and avoid persecution in England by the Anglican Church.

It took three frustrating years and lots of compromises and concessions to arrange the passage, and in the end, most of the members of Cushman's church chose to stay home rather than suffer the indignities of the contract Cushman and Carver ended up with. The settlers would be under a bond to work off their passage for seven years, and in the end, the homes and gardens they built would not belong to them. It was the best deal the Pilgrim negotiators could get, but it was not popular with the folks at Green Gate. Non-believers, known to the "Saints" as "strangers," were taken aboard to fill the ships, and gather the workforce necessary, which finally took off in late August. There were seventy-six adventurers, (not to mention the 26 children of the passengers) including as Skipper Jones counted… “Thirty-four men, nineteen women, five hired hands and sailors, eleven men going under bond… one woman servant... six orphans. WHAT are these orphans?”

In a great act of charity, homeless waifs from the streets of London, between seven and twelve years of age, were now apportioned amongst the settler’s families. They could not have been left behind. In fact their services were needed. But few would survive the first year.


One of the two ships turned out to be faulty or sabotaged, and Cushman wrote: “I pray you… prepare for evill tidings of us, every day… I see not in reason how we shall escape even ye gasping of hunger starved persons: but God can do much, & His will be done… Poore William King & myself doe strive who shall be meate for ye fishes, but we looke for a glorious resurrection.”

Eventually the questionable, leaky ship was was left behind, and twenty or so would-be Pilgrims, including Robert Cushman never made the first voyage. I am a Mayflower descendant because Cushman's son married Mary Allerton, who was the youngest passenger on the Mayflower, when just 2 years old. Robert Cushman came the next year with his son Thomas, and after preaching a sermon, left his son in the care of Governor Bradford. They never saw each other again.

Robert Cushman left many precious quotes behind, as he wrote his church often as he labored for their cause, which in the end, was not what anyone had originally intended. He warned the voyagers of the continued delays, prophetically warning they had “already delayed overlong in regard to the season of the year…” and as he feared, “They would find to their cost.”

On Sept 6, after several attempts, the pilgrims left England, way too late to avoid a difficult voyage and with scant time to establish shelters in New England before winter set in. On board, the 102 pilgrims survived on hard tack, “salt horse,” dried fish, cheese and BEER. The first item of thanksgiving, besides the schnopske, was the Mayflower itself. The cargo ship proved to be the best acquisition that Deacon Cushman had made, large and sound, and more than seaworthy. Never-the-less, at least three people died before they arrived in their new home, which was only settled on because they were lost. After searching for the mouth of the St. Lawrence, they gave up and took what they could find...

Pastor John Robinson had said “All great & honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages.” Of course, he had never boarded any of the ships, and stayed back in Holland.

Unbelievably, at least two Indians showed up who could speak and understand English, and they made the first year possible for those who survived. It is doubtful that any English friendly natives would have been around where they had intended to land. One of them, named Squanto, was killed trying to protect them from other Indians. To me, that's what Thanksgiving is all about. When God calls us into action, to do hard things, He has already prepared our way, and provided miracles to make our mission possible. And those of us who do some of what he tells us, and cross bridges or great waters or difficult walls, give thanks for His Providential sufficiency.

Paul said "I can do all things through Christ..." but we rarely ever discuss the price of that supernatural partnership. Jesus explained it this way: He who seeks his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake... shall find it.

That was the kind of spirit, the brand of obendience that characterized the Pilgrims. Most of them never made it. They were lost in an infinite wilderness, but thay had found IT. They were largely used up, living sacrifices. Even a Native American who had been to Europe and learned English and then found his way back home to find his whole village destroyed by a white man's disease... and graciously showed these pitiful people how to survive in the new land... was willingly sacrificed. Lost... and found. And then lost into His service. Meanwhile the Pilgrims starved, and struggled and many perished.

About half of the Pilgrims lived through the first year and celebrated their first harvest, and roofs over their heads, and enough food to eat and life itself. They, after all that suffering, were THANKFUL.

And today, we take so much for granted and are perfunctorily, somewhat thankful. For thirteen generations my family has told this story and enjoyed our heritage and been proud of these courageous folk who planted our name on this Continent. These people were RADICAL! The miracle of that little fiesty group who forsook everything for freedom and their Faith so long ago still stands as a monument... to them, and to the God that preserved them.

We should wither in the light of this story, and wonder what miracles we might find, if we would only do like them.