INVITATION: To The Narrow Path- America's Legacy.

Life is a car.

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." 

                                                           Jesus

Most people will never know the passion, some would call it obsession it requires to write a book. And that is probably a good thing for them. As Hank Williams Jr. sang about his alter-ego, “Bosephus,” “It's in me and its got to come out.” And that is the crux of the matter. Publishing... others reading it, possible profit... those were all secondary. All kinds of forces drive a person, and for me it was a sense of possessing something which did not belong to me... and wanting to hand it off. Wanting to find a way for it to be transferable. And gladly transferred.

If you stuck with it- this unfolding, you know that there are no accidents, few coincidences, and everything, every person, every event fits somehow into a Cosmic plan... designed by God. Even our rebellious nature, or disbelief. My personal credo is that nothing ever falls together. Only with God's creative energy does anything ever “fall together.”

Science has never witnessed one incident where anything fell together by spontaneous generation. Not a single Cadillac, or can opener, or a simple amoeba ever fell together. Only God can make anything from raw materials into a complex organism, which then in most cases only makes excrement, and if it is lucky, some off-spring. No accident of nature, or millions of them over millions of years, ever made so much as a sea sponge. Just imagine how much fun we would be having right now, if mankind really understood the mysteries of Creation and life. We wouldn't be making movies... we would be making every kind of slave and monster.

Good things have never just “fallen together”... and when they seem to have, God was the author of it. And once you trust that truth, you can enjoy life as a spectator in an unfolding drama, in which you have free agency, but relatively little impact on the world around you.

If life was a car, you would only be in control of the steering wheel... but God is the manufacturer, and wrote the owner's manual, and the master of state inspection, and the motor, the transmission, and even the exhaust. It is your life, your car, but it is His deal. It's all about Him.

You might go places, leave a few tread marks or have a few wrecks... but only when the motor, fueled by God, allowed you to. God is not so concerned about our travel log as He is about us merely recognizing that without Him, our car will just end up a junk heap in a wrecking yard. It is not so important where we went, but why we went, and who we tried to carry with us. He provides us with power, comfort and speed, and huge windshields for protection and beautiful views of the world. He cares about our motivations more than our destinations here on earth, which reveal our souls, because the real point is our eternal home with Him. Some people get distracted and love the car instead of Him, love the places they go and forget the motor who made it all possible.

We were made to worship a wondrous and generous God. We were put in our car to find out where our eternal soul would choose to go, if it was set free. And we are allowed, if we so choose to wander down the most lonely and darkest roads. If we go cruising through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, looking for sin, we will find it. Or we can choose to steer, with His guidance, towards His light. And He is generous in His “wonders to perform.”

Knowing this, 400 years ago my ancestors steered down a very dark road... and came to this country at its very beginning, when it was a vast, dangerous wilderness. One of my ancestors arranged for the Mayflower and the Speedwell to bring immigrants to the New World when there were no roads or stores or real protection of any kind; No local government, no churches, no doctors, not even a harbor to sail to. Those pilgrims had rejected the ways of their society, and possessed a passion which drove them to forsake all, and step into the unknown... so that they would be free to believe, and practice their religion, and trust their fates to that all-knowing God. This is exactly what God wants all of us to do.

Half of them perished the first year. They suffered terribly for their sense of adventure and aberrant Faith. Lesson number one was that these freedoms, of association, of speech, of religion, were worth dying for. And if not for some miracles, they might all have ended up dead like the settlers at Jamestown who preceded them. Lesson number two was that God does not always provide a safety net, even for those whom He loves. Our survival as mortals is not as important as our preparation for eternity. So hunger, disease and massacres reduced their numbers and their other countrymen who followed after them. Still, whatever misery they knew in the Old World drove them from European shores to continue a great migration across the sea. It was an epic evacuation of the disillusioned and discontented. And the historic landing of the doggedly hopeful.

It may seem unfair to say, but I believe, that the followers of that society stayed behind. The pathfinders, the inventors, the leaders gradually went to a better place of opportunity, which was more precious to them than safe existence. And in their hands and minds were the true Faith, and the polity which could save the world from itself. Lesson number three was that no matter how scary things appear, God has a plan, which will serve all of mankind. And yes, he blesses those who obey Him.

Even while still on the sea, the pilgrims envisioned a country of freedoms and democracy; a way of life built not on leader or servant classes but on the teachings of a servant Savior, who commissioned servant-leaders. “He who would be last, shall be first.” The rest you know well. They put down their dreams and signed it. It was called the Mayflower Compact, and that covenant, and the spirit behind it, was what made them different from many other attempts to settle in the New World.

Two of my ancestors, then unrelated, were signers of the Mayflower Compact. One of them, Isaac Allerton, himself a bit of scamp, had a daughter who became famous among the pilgrims, as a kind of care-giver, a frontier nurse and social worker, recognized as one who labored and sacrificed even more than the others. Her name was Mary Allerton, who had arrived at Plymouth on the legendary Mayflower, a ship contracted by her future father in law, and she survived the many toils and snares. Sixteen years later she married Thomas Cushman in 1636 and they had many descendants. He would eventually serve as ruling elder at Plymouth for many years, and later someone wrote of her deeds, and dubbed her the “Mother of the Pilgrims,” something my grandmother took great pride in. Her name can be seen carved in stone at Plymouth. Often reminded of these facts by my grandmother, I knew these facts before I began this quest, to get this book out of me, in an attempt to remind American mothers of who they are, who they have been, who they must be.

And then as I began this project, Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation began to spin and circulate- and amaze me all the more... as things fell together.

My very first impression was that the old tintypes featured in this book were from the collection of Mark Twain, because some of the very first ones I obtained were people within his family and sphere of influence. Then, because of all of the Old West tintypes, that theory morphed to Twain's biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, who had been a frontier photographer. But Paine turned out to be a somewhat controversial if not scandalous character, and to my shock, was a direct ancestor of another tribe of Cushmans, distant cousins of mine, whose family history was unknown to me. My heart was heavy if my story at that point was to go any further, as the Twain/Paine story, at least my impression of it, is not a positive one. But the tintypes kept coming, and coming, and eventually I realized that although there were images which may have been photographed by Paine, or collected by Twain, they were not the whole story.

It was even bigger. And much closer to my own family schematic. In fact a bizarre example of a grandiose family affair. Towards the end of the avalanche, more tintypes of writers began to show up, and like Twain and Paine, almost all associated with Harper & Bros... a huge Victorian era publishing house which dated far back... a large operation which produced magazines and books and might have had need to own all of these likenesses at one time or another, to cover the news of the day. For me it was mystery solved. Later a very knowledgeable person who had researched Laura Ingalls Wilder cemented my hunch, providing some welcome “good news” and verifying that Rose Wilder Lane and her mother had provided rare family photos to Harpers... but most were never used and thought by her and others to have been returned. But she also offered some “bad news,” summarily dismissing my tintypes as not being what I thought they were. Not even close.

But by that time I was conditioned to having my precious bubble popped... and the book was written, and I was fairly committed, and very sure of myself. Too much had gone for many months like a magic carpet ride. Even my skeptical little brother agreed that the images were rare, authentic images of famous persons.

I had acted on faith, followed my passion, and prayerfully met and processed each day what God, or chance had put in front of me. And I had something else. Those little things that happened along the way which encouraged me daily- told me to keep on- little things which would mean nothing to anyone else. Such as finding stunning commonalities with several of my subjects. And finding commonalities between them. Commonalities were one thing our country was in dire need of at this point in history. I had been finding an undercurrent of wisdom connecting many of them to me, America, and the family of man; And finding for instance, unknown to me, I shared genealogical lineage with the Delano branch of the Roosevelts.

We all had descended from the same pilgrim ancestor... then spelled de la Noye. Remembered by genealogists as Phillipe de Lannoy, he too had been on the ill-fated Speedwell, and come to America on the Fortune with my Cushman ancestors in 1621, and his descendant Mary Soule, a double Delano descendant, married into my line in the early Nineteenth Century. Thus I was also distantly related to Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose, also Delano descendants. Bizarrely, out of the hundreds of tintypes which I had collected, and scores of possible interesting American mothers I might have written about... I had unknowingly identified, purchased, researched... then chosen three which were related to me by blood! (OK, in Eleanor's case, by marriage) And they were even closer related by cultural legacy.

Although that blood relation was distant, it seemed to prove something which I believe, that there is an unseen hand involved in and guiding our lives, powering our car, a Cosmic Artist according to Sagan, speaking over the centuries to people, through whom He has been communicating with his children for centuries. And the combined spirit of freedom, with the Holy Spirit of Faith, the origins of America... is a gift and a legacy which runs deep. It has been carried by a remnant all along. Way back, God made promises to them... through Abraham [“father of the multitudes”], and He intends to keep those promises. And the beautiful part is, through Christ, anyone can choose to graft themselves into that family, that stream of consciousness, whenever they choose, and begin their own epic journey.

And once you join that stream, these kinds of “coincidences” just flow. For me they had been cascading all of my life. In my family, we were raised to take great pride in our American patriarch, Thomas Cushman, just a teen-aged son left on these shores by his father Robert Cushman, who was never to be seen again. Elder Cushman had managed to follow his passion, and obey God... to contract the ships, arrange the voyages of the Mayflower and Speedwell, survive a leaky vessel and still make it the next year, and to preach the first sermon recorded on American soil. He left his son indentured to Governor Bradford, and then disappeared into the fog of legend. Names like Cushman, Allerton, de Lannoy, all mean something to those who live their lives in thanksgiving of this magnificent country, grateful for sixteen generations of guidance and blessing, and being and seeing the fruit of this family tree. And being keepers of the flame.

Ironically, when I was just a boy, my father researched our genealogy, and he thought he may have found, jokingly where my brothers and I might have been related to Jesse James, through my mother's grandmother. So even though I have no proof of that, I had long since embraced his story as a humbling part of my potential legacy. Even if his Reynolds side was of distant relation, the potential outlaw in the family made my life choices more clear. Whose example would I follow? Every person has that same kind of choice to make. So to a considerable degree, this book is a study of my distant relatives.

One of my favorite preachers always makes sure and tells his flock the “take away” from his sermons; what he wants you take out of the service when you leave. As an artist, I have been accustomed to letting go of my product and leaving it to people to interpret, if they want to, or not, and anyway that suits them. But today's reader is less investigative, and has joined many art viewers I have met who absolutely hate symbolism, obscurity, and therefore do not respond to subtlety. So, just in case, here is the take way... my intended take away for this work:

1. Mark Twain was right in one respect. This world, our lives, can be all the hell anybody needs to ever experience. But often it is because we make it that way. We create all the hell we need through bad choices and negative habits. Karma is true to a large part, but it is not the final reward. Conversely, life can also be a taste of heaven... if we have not made a mess of it.

2. Yes, history repeats itself, and part of that repetition is people ignoring it. And doing the same stupid stuff over and over again... the Bible is an excellent proof of that. People who ignore the lessons of history ignore valuable lessons which would make life less a challenge, less chaotic, as they neglect truths which would make life more manageable.

3. Jesus Christ and America were two major intrusions which broke the theme and tempo of man's history, his inhumanity to man... and both have been obstructed, corrupted, and attacked. Both are still trying to save the world.

4. Mothers are wired by God to instinctively provide the love and nurture which insures man's survival. Mothers are our North star, our earthly home, and our alter ego. Our country cannot survive without a regular production of them.

5. Science is not and never will be at war with God. God created all of its parts. But Science is and will always be very limited, like an ant trying to understand the Internet. Science can never and will never replace its creator. It is foolish to look to Science for many answers, which are still mysteries, and will always be. It is foolish to hold God to any standards of proof invented by man. But I would yield to those standards if Man ever proved his own scientific theories, which seem to challenge the existence of God. But he cannot.

6. Atheists find what they are looking for. Seekers of God can find Him if they are sincere. For the most part, life is your car and you drive it where you want to go. It is your bed and you make it. And you will eventually sleep in it a long, long time. And God is quite fair and unobtrusive. Everybody gets the eternity that they wanted.

7. People who chose to believe in a creator God founded this country and gave Him something He always wanted, a people who govern themselves under His Word and His authority. The combination was dynamite. America is the hope of the world, but only if we maintain that partnership.

8. It is all, the survival of our values, our culture, our future, up to our mothers. Mothers wiped our noses, and our tears, bandaged our wounds, fed us wholesome food and ideals, took us to Sunday School, met with our teachers, cheered for us on the ball field, and listened patiently to our teen-aged nonsense... and waited patiently by the phone to hear from our adult lives... ready to mother some more. They are God's living example of His unconditional love. And they do so until they die.

So you are a mother and you have never been told any of this before. Where do you begin?

God is constantly giving you clues... road signs, which will draw you unto Himself. The more you ignore them, the farther you go away from Him. Until one day, you are deep in the weeds. And actually, some people love the weeds. In the end we all get whatever we seek. Start by truly seeking Him. Reading, asking. You never know, you may be the next Eleanor Roosevelt.

I loved God... and history... photography and writing... and God gave me this incredible project- based on one of the most important historic finds of this generation... or as some would suggest, an amazing, uncanny, seemingly impossible parallel universe, designed to entertain me in my last years... as I swam around in my own self-delusion. You can understand why I believe the former, but it was a great gift to me either way.

It gave me something to do after a couple of heart attacks; an intense dive into American history, imagery, and the love of countless mothers. It may have all been a serendipitous illusion, even a distraction from my disability and the evaporation of my art career, in these changing times. But the bird's-eye view of America was awe-inspiring and gave me a high unlike any other creative endeavor, more ecstatic than I can relate- to discover this cache, digest and share these lives and legacies and loves. To feel, through each story, a little of that mystical, powerful connection with my own mother.

She has been gone since I was a young man... I have missed her for almost 40 years. And I never had the sense to say to her, what I have tried to say here to all of you girls.

So I thank God for the awesome ride, and for this final destination... and a chance to say:

Thank you mom.

Thank you God, for her, and what she did and what she tried to do. And all of those mothers before her. Thank you God for someone here on earth to be my nurturer and everlasting angel... and my most devoted fan; My best, most wise, most passionate teacher. Someone to point lovingly, carefully, to your Everlasting Love and Glory.

Amen