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Reflection for February 20, 2005

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Genealogies

When the people of Israel put their Bible together as the story of their ancestors' journey down through time, they began with the Exodus, namely that grand moment when Moses with God's help led his enslaved Hebrew compatriots out of Egypt toward the Promised Land. (It would be like us Americans beginning our national story with the Revolutionary War, George Washington, and the like.) But for the people of Israel, just going back to the Exodus left a gap. What about their ancestry prior to the Exodus? And so they reached back into their treasury of memoirs to include accounts of their patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel. And that was as far as they could get - circa 1800 BC. (In our case it would be like our realizing our history really began well before 1776, that for seven whole generations since the Mayflower Americans had been British subjects who never dreamed of being anything else. But our history would be incomplete without their inclusion.)

Still the Israelite composers of our Bible felt uncomfortable reaching back only to Abraham and Sarah. They faced that other gap between Abraham and the very origin of the human race, a pre-historic span that left them still suspended in time, afloat in thin air. So they filled that gap as well with legendary figures like Noah and Nimrod and even a dramatic account of humanity's first parents and thus they were able to complete their genealogy, tracking it back to God himself: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them and said, 'Be fruitful and multiply.'" Now Israel's genealogical research was complete. The Bible told them the whole story of who they were and whence they were and of God's enduring presence among them in notable events and ancestors. This whole record now made them feel at home in the universe. And knowing their past right down to its origin in God allowed them to trust that their future would lead somewhere meaningful as well.

Genealogy is a big thing nowadays. If we lived in Europe or Asia or Africa we'd probably be more at ease about our ancestry because memories seem to stretch farther back on those continents. But America's ancestors were transplants. If as in my case your ancestors got off the boat in the 1840's, that's a pretty good stretch - yet it's only 160 years. And then you get a response like the one I received from a granduncle when I asked him to clue me on his parents. He brushed me off saying: "I'm my own ancestor." He had become a true American, a deliberate victim of amnesia.

And that bothered me. Like Israel of old I disliked living in a historical vacuum. I wanted ancestors, an extended family; I wanted my life to be grounded upon something more than a birth certificate. My family didn't seem that interested. But eventually I did make a connection with my past: I went to a parochial school, went to church, saw people named Peter, James, John, Mary, Elizabeth in blazing color upon stained glass windows; heard all those biblical stories, pondered the legends of St. Francis, was surrounded in my classes and neighborhood by all those baptismal names shared by generations before: Samuel, Nathan, David, Judith, Esther, Barbara, Joseph, Vincent, Agnes (the martyr who shared my birthday), Cecelia, Mark, Clare, Anthony, Catherine and all those Francis X. Murphys and Francis X. Kellys.

From the secular void of our modern world that prefers to live only for today and tomorrow I had found in the Church a family, an ancestry, a rich genealogy of the widest stretch in time and space imaginable, cradled within the bosom of God Almighty. And ever since then - though I'm still curious about my immediate biological ancestors - I don't feel lost at all; indeed am proud to exist among so many brothers and sisters of whatever century or millennium they inhabited - or will inhabit.

-- Geoff Wood