Faraway Home, Part 1

by John Comer

Raloo Parish, County Antrim, northern Ireland. Fall, 1820. The crops are harvested but not stored into barns. There are no farm animals. There is not even a plow left to be protected from rust as the ocean winds come down past the Hebrides from the distant north. There is no farm. There is no home. Everything has been sold. William and Elizabeth Junkin are emigrating.

They hope to find a kinder, gentler breeze in South Carolina where they will join others who share their Calvinistic faith in a place where religion does not cause wars and land is not allotted according to church affiliation. In all likelihood the ancestors of William and Elizabeth had come from Scotland to Ulster generations earlier, like so many others, transplanted Presbyterians, pawns of political/religious power struggles.

The final church meeting is now behind them. The sermon, starting off like a distant rolling thunder, then working up to full storm, preached. Amen has been said to the ruling elder’s prayer, beseeching heaven for fair winds to fill the sails, and no storms at sea. Prolonged handshakes. Awkward hugs. Chaste kisses. Promises to give messages to kin and former neighbors now in Carolina. All that remains to be done is to leave. Leave for Belfast to take the boat for America. Leave Ireland. Leave home. Forever.

Leaving is much of what life is all about. We’d never get anywhere or do anything if we didn’t leave something old behind. We have to leave childhood to find adulthood. We leave parents to find our own lives. We abandon lesser values when something better can be had. America was populated by people who left an old life and sailed across oceans looking for something special.

Abraham knew what it meant to leave home. So did his descendants. “My father was a wandering Aramean, . . .” has been somewhat prophetic for them. By Jesus’ time they were living just about everywhere. One little Jewish man, Saul from Tarsus, blessed us all when he cut his old ties and traveled the world with a new message. He even wrote some very memorable lines about forgetting what was behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead. We all have to adapt, to change in order to improve, even as the Junkin family did as they left behind their old home because they had a vision of something greater. The world will not stand still. We make a mistake if we do. There’s always a new world beckoning to those with faith and hope.