Ellis Island in New York Harbor; if you haven’t been there, you should. It is a place that is energized with the resonant memory of the past.
It’s an exhilarating experience standing in what is now the Ellis Island museum. When I was there a couple of years ago, I felt the courageous spirits of our immigrant ancestors and a profound respect for their courage to embrace change. So many moved step by step through the great hall on their way to freedom.
Amid the din of other people's soft conversations. I walked the path and steps that 18-million immigrants followed. I felt their hearts as I sensed their pride at what they personally accomplished, and at what this country has become because of them and what we still can be.
These ghosts of greatness linger there, not because they came through that portal of liberty so many years ago, but because they stay to stand watch. Their presence is everywhere, in old photographs, in hundred year old scribbled messages to loved ones on a passage wall, and in the descendants, who visit here and keep it hallowed ground.
Ellis island reminds us that it does not matter how or where or when potential greatness comes to this land, it only matters what one does with the manifesting dreams of freedom, opportunity and responsibility.
1 comment:
It is so wonderful that we have been able to save and restore Ellis Island. As a people of all nationalities it is important to have this history to remember those that came here and how they suffered a harsh life and be determined enough to do it for many generations. It surely wasn't easy and I think of people who still come here who go through the same situations as our forefathers before us i.e., menial labor, poor housing, illnesses, no family support and many years of hard work and hard living until their children hopefully get educated and move up from their parents dispair. God bless them...!!!
We as Americans should be ashamed of ourselves if we don't get an education, do well and appreciate what went before us...we have had all the benefits given to us because of the strife our forefathers and our parents endured.
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