The Five Pound Note and the Long Way Home

Many of us Americans wonder just exactly made our families come to the United States. For those of us who are just a couple of generations removed from the realities of immigration we might even be able to find out, and thanks to the immense generosity of my cousins in Ireland, I know now too. The answer is 5 pounds.

In Ireland in the 1800's the landlord, if they were going to evict you, might offer you 5 pounds to leave before they had to pay the sheriff to do it for them. It was a way for them to save money. This is what happened in the village of Kilteevan to my great great grandmother, Sara Hanley, and her family. Her dad took the 5 pounds, and they left for Providence, Rhode Island. Within a generation, that same family,who before would have had little more than a grade school education had college grads and doctors and college professors among them. They took the 5 pounds, went to Cobh, boarded a boat for the U.S, and never looked back. They didn't ever abandon their friends or family back in county Roscommon, they just kept moving forward. So often in our lives we look at desperate situations and think that there is no way out, but we are almost always wrong to think so. The truth is that forward through what seems to be a storm is often the way in which God's dreams for us are realized. Losing everything and having to move to another continent didn't seem like a joyful thing, but the truth was that my 4th great grandfather, John Hanley, accepted that 5 pound note and left, and in doing so accepted a new life that lead to mine. There was much to fear, I am sure, but the gift of courage that we receive from the Holy Spirit is the assurance that in God's love and providence, all will be well. So many of us sons and daughters of immigrant families are proof of that.

When I arrived in Roscommon, and to the town of Oran where some of the Glennons, my cousins in Ireland, live now they said "welcome home!" and that is, in the end, the truth of it. It we can just rely on God enough for courage we can know that even when we take that 5 pound note and leave the past behind, it doesn't mean the end of the things that matter most. The Hanley home is still there, as are the Hanleys, as is the promise. We would do well to mind the most common admonition in the Gospels, and not to be afraid.