For transcribing history, I carefully chose and invited other voices on board to help tell the American faith-and-fact story, and some to lead prayers. As the Host, realizing that even those from the distant past deserved an audience, I asked God to bring you and other Passengers on board. My ability to see and confess sins results from years in Bible study, prayer, and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who died to save humankind from punishment for sins—though confession is not always easy. For example, ignoring the recorded sins of my possible ancestors and definite namesakes, the Pierces, would have been easy; instead, and specifically because this sin still affects so many and hangs over our nation like a cloud, I chose to confess and regret that a Pierce was the first New England slave trader. Perhaps you will relate to or consider forgiving that sin and others confessed on board, as these are powerful sail-setting and caring actions to take.

Potential Passenger, if you agree with me that America and other nations need us—citizens of America and those from other nations who appreciate an incredibly blessed, rich, and spiritually founded, grounded, caring, and motivated nation—please set your priorities according to God’s guidance, take responsibility for personal, family, and national matters of conscience, and schedule times to cruise alone or with a group. As you join me on board and we sail, the Pilgrims’ seventeenth-century Plymouth covenant—as recorded in the Mayflower Compact and signed by forty-one male Passengers—will advance to the twenty-first-century Passenger dedications of our national, Judeo-Christian, and personal lives and liberty to God’s glory and honor. By embarking with that daily destination and motivation in mind, and with responsibilities undertaken, We the Passengers will help preserve, protect, and purify America’s civil and spiritual legacies—and at the same time, fulfill our duties to the world and to God. Yes, those goals can be accomplished just by reading a book, most notably and essentially if We the Passengers will use Scripture as the greatest wavebreaking pilgrimage, precedent, language, and challenging course ever charted for humankind.

This logbook was written and formatted and is now introduced as a spiritual cruise with you the twenty-first-century Passenger—the reader—in my mind, heart, and prayers. Because God answered those prayers, your importance is indicated by the capitalization of “Passenger” throughout the cruise.

I needed to learn unfamiliar language for writing a spiritual cruise logbook. Speaking from experience, I guarantee that you will quickly become comfortable with the navigational terms and words—used allegorically and spiritually—such as “on board,” “charter,” “baggage,” “Passenger,” “Scripture Course,” “headings,” “embarkation,” “Daily Destination Dedications,” “coming about,”“tacking, trimming, setting, and filling sails,” and “disembarkation.”

With that,

I hope you are prepared to get underway.

Beverly Pierce Stroebel