SHIPS AND BOATS

Many years ago Tony Brown, host of a PBS public affairs show, responding in George to the question "If I Were President" (scary thought, isn't it?) about what his victory song would be, said this: "I would write a song called 'We Didn't All Come over on the Same Ship, But We're All in the Same Boat.'"

It is a rather good thought. My grandparents came over to this country on a ship. They landed at Ellis Island and then made their way to Eastern (my dad’s side) and Western (my Mom’s side) Pennsylvania. When they landed, they joined thousands of other immigrants, all of whom had come on ships, all seeking to make a new life in a new country. Those ships came from all over Europe.. What they all discovered, those who came before, with and after my grandparents, was that, as Brown would have it, they we're now all in the same boat.

They were and we are. My grandparents never became rich, if that was their goal, even their thoughts, when they boarded those ships. But they lived a good life, even though that life was filled with one struggle for survival after another. After all, they lived through the Great Depression. But they made it because they worked together. The Depression, the struggle to make it from one day to the next, was everyone's problem. They were all in the same boat. What they quickly learned is that even though life back in the “old country” was difficult, which is why they left in the first place, life in their new home would not be much, if any, easier.

One of the problems that I think we have in this country today is that we have not had to struggle together. The Wars – WWI and WWII – and the Depression were national struggles. We have not had such a national struggle since, nothing that brings us together, forces us to realize we need one another juts to survive. The result has been that we now struggle individually and somehow believe that that is the way it is supposed to be.

Now I am not advocating a collapse of the stock market and a worldwide depression to bring us closer together, nor would I advocate an us-vs-them war to do the same. There is enough misery and suffering in this world, even in our own country already. We already have whatever it is we need to bring us closer together, to realize that we are all in the same boat. We don’t need a depression or national catastrophe.

We've known it all along. That was and is Jesus's basic message. We are all brothers and sisters one to another, no matter where we were born, where we live, the color of our skin, our gender, even our beliefs or disbeliefs or unbeliefs. We are all children of one God and Father who is in all and over all and loves all and works through all. All, not some, not a select few, not just the rich, not just the poor: all.

The "ships" that brought us to the place we are now, in many ways, matter not. What matters is that we are all in the same boat. We sail or sink together – whether as a world, as a country, as a state, as a city, as a church, as a family. There is room on the boat for diversity, but not for division.