Strangers In Boats

nothing was where it was supposed to be.

the interstate had been swallowed. airport runways turned to rivers.

here and there, gators would peak their heads through the water from what used to be backyards. they were as lost as everyone else.

33 trillion gallons of rain. it doesn’t even really mean anything — the mind can’t make sense of a number that big.

you could hardly remember there used to be houses. thousands and thousands of houses.

it was the type of devastation that made you want to lose faith — the kind of horror that turns everyone against one another as they fight to survive. only, it didn’t.

there were strangers in boats.

atop the endless dark waters, through sheets of rain and cruel winds, you could see them: strangers in boats.

there were motorboats and canoes and makeshift rafts fashioned out of inflatable mattresses.

they were all steered by strangers. neighbors who’d never met. teenagers. news crews. out-of-towners who drove down just for this.

in places, they were the only thing one could see other than water.

they patrolled the misplaced seas, searching for anyone in need of rescue. they were at once heroes and everymen, saviors and nobodies.

they delivered families to refuge, for no reason other than their hearts said they ought to. they brought our drifting faith back to shore, and anchored it.

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the story of America is a story of strangers in boats.

strangers in boats sailed here from Britain to declare their independence.

at Ellis Island, Lady Liberty welcomed strangers in boats with her outstretched arm, and they helped weave the exceptional fabric of our nation.

and when America threatened to forget all that binds us together, strangers in boats braved hurricanes to remind us of that shared humanity — of the vastness of our grace and the courage of our compassion.

neither the people on the boats, nor those they pulled from the jaws of death, cared who among them were Democrats or Republicans; black or white; straight or gay; Christian or Jewish or Muslim. they were all just people — some who were able to help and others who desperately needed it.

when the waters finally wash away, having already ruined too many homes and claimed too many lives, let us not allow them take that truth from us.

let us not slip back into the false comfort of tribalism — the toxic conflation of differences and defects.

let us reject the fiction that success is a zero-sum game — that by drowning others, we will rise.

let us still be those strangers in boats, bound by our common goodness.