RALEIGH

Thanks all of you who have written emails to me to ask how I am doing. I have not gotten back to all of them yet, but thanks just the same.

Last night, Diane and I sat down to watch the DVD of "Elizabeth - The Golden Age." In it, Queen Elizabeth listens intently to Sir Walter Raleigh describe what it feels like to sail across an ocean without knowing what's on the other side.

Raleigh:

"Can you imagine? Can you feel? What it is to cross an ocean?
For weeks you see nothing but the horizon. All round you.
Perfect, and empty. Your ship is small - tiny - a speck in such
immensity.  

"You live with fear. In the grip of fear - fear of storms, fear
of sickness, fear of the immensity. What if you never escape?
How can you escape? There's nowhere to go!

"So you must drive your fear down... deep into your belly...
and study your charts, and watch your compass, and pray
for a fair wind and - hope. 

"Pure, naked, fragile hope.

"When all your senses scream at you, 'Lost!'                      

"...Lost!"

"Imagine it. Day after day, staring west, the rising sun on
your back,the setting sun in your eyes, hoping...
hoping...  

"At first, it's no more than a haze on the horizon, the
ghost of a haze, the pure line corrupted. But clouds
do that, and storms. So you watch. You watch.

"Then it's a smudge. a shadow on the far water. For a day,
for another day, the stain slowly spreads along the horizon,
and takes form - until on the third day you let yourself believe.
You dare to whisper the word - 

"Land."

"Land. Life. Resurrection. The true adventure. Coming out of the
vast unknown, out of the immensity, into safe harbour at last.

"That - THAT - is the New World."