memorial day from another era...

Along, in late November, 1528, a handful of Spaniards, survivors or an ill-starred expedition to Florida, were washed ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, some think near the present site of Galveston, Texas. One of these men was Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, 38 years old....Nunez led two other Spaniards and a Moor on a journey across the entire continent, barefoot and naked, which occupied them eight years.

The second page of this story is this...
in the world of grand expeditions...
Cabeza de Vaca's would be considered
a failure.

His expedition began with 578 men...
armor glittering
and horses covered with guady trappings.
The 580 became 400....
and upon thirst and exposure to
the frightful sun
the 400 became 40.
Of the 40
only 4 survived.

They did not conquer a people
or a land....
they lost everything...
every
thing...
and yet survived.

Why tell you this?
Because a friend recently said to me
"I just feel you need to read this book."

So I am reading
a tiny book titled
The Marvellous Adventure of Cabeza de Vaca.

The book contains a letter
written by Cabeza de Vaca
to the King of Spain
to explain
what
he had learned and experienced
on his expedition to the New World.

His words have wisdom for us to day...
in the midst of political and theological disputes.

Here are a few:

"To understand what it means to have nothing
one must have nothing."

"It leads us to believe what deep in our hearts
we all know, that a man can always stop
dead in his tracks and facing the truth
exemplify it in action. And this I believe
is the meaning of the journey we are all making."

"I shall teach the world how to conquer by
gentleness not by slaughter."

"All that we learned....
we have had to throw away.
Only what we learned
as babes in our mother's arms
has stayed with us to help others."

This great explorer
had nothing more to share
with his King
than discernment of the deepest kind...
which in reality
is the greatest
treasure one can
discover.