The Promise of a Silhouette in the Distance
First published October 14, 2015
I was thinking about Christopher Columbus this week. And not just because I had to work while everyone else got the day off.
I heard a radio personality mention how excited Columbus must have been when he finally found land.
How excited indeed.
It got me wondering about the entire journey and led me to do some research. It's easy to celebrate an end result without giving a second thought to how it came to be.
I discovered that Columbus proposed his voyage seven years before he actually went. He presented his plans of three sturdy, fully-equipped vessels to King John II of Portugal in 1485. The king submitted the proposal to his experts who rejected it after several years. I have difficulty waiting several months or even minutes to hear back about something I proposed.
I can't imagine the frustration of waiting years, and then hearing "no". But something made him try again.
In 1488, he traveled from Portugal to Spain to convince the Catholic monarchs there to finance the expedition. Great idea. If you can't get an answer out of one person, go ask another. Except, he wasn't granted an audience with King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I of Castile until 1489.
Another year. Gone.
Again he presented his plans. The Queen referred them to a committee (another committee!) who decided the idea was impractical, and advised the monarchs not to support it. I most definitely would have walked away at this point.
When decisions are left to committees, they often don't get decided. And still, something kept him going.
The next part of this chapter made me laugh. History tells us that Columbus continually nagged and begged asking the monarchs to support his plan at the royal court and endured two years of negotiations, before finally getting them to agree to fund his journey. The year was 1492.
I remember my mortgage negotiations and those only lasted a matter of weeks, at most. To wrestle over the details for 730 days had to have been agony. By now I'm sure he was shouting to anyone who would listen, "Just let me go!"
At 8:00 in the morning on August 3, 1492, Columbus departed from Castilian Palos de la Frontera with the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.
It must have felt so good to finally be on his way with all that open water in front of him. Sometimes, the process to start something takes so long that we think what comes after will come easily. And then it doesn't.
Three days into the journey, Pinta's rudder broke. If you're not familiar with ships, this is the part that keeps them level and steady. It's the balance. It prevents them from toppling over into the sea. No rudder, no ship. The crew was able to secure it with ropes until they reached a nearby island and could repair it. Crisis averted.
As Columbus was gathering provisions during this stop, he received word that three Portuguese ships were hovering around a nearby island with the intent of capturing him. I can't think of anything that would make me want to turn and run (or sail) in the other direction more than being captured, kidnapped, or carried away!
But he continued the next morning without incident. A few weeks later, barely one month into the voyage, Columbus realized his compass no longer pointed North. Didn't we just get the rudder fixed? Didn't we just escape imprisonment? Now, we have no direction.
When I am in unfamiliar territory, I rely heavily on my GPS to get me where I need to be. I'm lost without it. Literally lost, driving in circles, going up and down the same roads twice. That's the thing about the ocean - there are no street signs, no houses or stores, no way to know if you've been where you just were.
I would have really wanted to quit. Allegedly, the crew thought the same way, because at this point they threatened to sail back to Spain. But Columbus had quite the reputation as an astronomer and his skills gradually put them at ease.
As bad as being lost with no direction would have been, it's the living conditions on the ship that would have finished me for sure. This was worse than camping. And I don't camp.
Crew worked in four-hour shifts pumping bilge, clearing the deck, working the sails, and checking the ropes and cargo. When they were off duty, they slept where ever they could find a space. Columbus himself often spent days without sleep. Many sailors died from disease, hunger, and thirst. There was one hot meal a day.
Religion was the central focus of their lives - they began every day with prayers and hymns and ended with services at night.
One of the best parts of the story is that Columbus believed incorrect arguments that the Earth actually had a much smaller diameter, meaning his journey was longer than he realized. No ship in the 15th century could carry enough food and fresh water for such a journey.
Isn't it so good that we have a tendency to miscalculate? I wonder how often we just wouldn't start if we knew how long the journey was going to be.
So here he was.
Seven years of wrestling with the powers-that-be who told him he was crazy. Years of waiting. Years of negotiating. Finally getting to go. And then those travel conditions. Not enough food. Not enough water. Not nearly enough sleep and few places to even lay his head. Sickness and death all around him. An attempt on his life. A rudder that can't balance, but what difference does it make since the compass doesn't point North anyway?
Nothing but the ship's blank canvass and his prayers.
On October 10 the crew lost all patience. They were done, and they told Columbus as much. So often when you can't take another step, or sail one more mile, you need to pick up your feet or redirect your sail and keep going. When you've got nothing left, dig a little deeper, and keep going.
At 2:00 a.m. on October 12, 1492 - two days later - one of them spotted a silhouette off in the distance.
They hadn't arrived yet. They weren't suddenly made well. They didn't instantly have their stomachs filled with food and water. This is the big-smile part of the story because the silhouette meant there was hope. It's the somewhat blurred vision that means what had been hoped for is coming. It's possible.
Now, I'm not looking to discover a whole new world. Many of my immediate requests and desires are far less impacting than that. But I have spent time waiting and wrestling - waiting on God and wrestling with Him. I've spent nights not sleeping feeling like my balance is off and I have no direction. But my story isn't over yet.
Sometimes it seems like you will never find the things you know are out there. You mistake the fog and the darkness to mean you're a million miles from where you want to be. But you're not. If you give up in the middle, you'll never know. If you fail to start, you'll really never know. You will miss what's just up ahead. It's closer than you think. Often we are provided with a glimpse to give us just enough hope to hold on until the promise is within our grasp. Rest assured, morning is coming.
How happy Columbus must have been when he finally stepped off that ship.