Beginnings

I’ve taken my grandchildren down to the dock to look for ducks and turtles, but nothing seems to be moving on the water today.  It’s very quiet. Perhaps we’ve scared them off with simply our presence.  This does not bother the kids though.  They have found a few pebbles on the ground and are anxious to toss them into the water.  They love to see them splash and the sound that they make.  I, myself, love to watch the circular rings that form and I snap a picture.  It is a surprisingly unseasonably warm and sunny day.  I begin to think about the start of this New Year, and fresh beginnings.  What is it about this year that brings me to a new beginning?

I have begun to delve into my family history again after a very long break.  I was very involved with it around the year 2005, but or some reason, I compiled all that I had up until that point and then I put it aside for a while. Life happened! There continued to be a longing in me each time I thought about it that there was still much to be known.

Since that time, my own immediate living family has grown by leaps and bounds.  Two of my children have married and brought with them their own extended families.  As of today we have 5 grandchildren ranging in age from 5 months to 8 years.  It is no less than a miracle that this much life has begun and blessed us in such a short span of time.  Life keeps marching forward.

Yesterday, we took 3 of our grandchildren to visit the Eiteljorg Native American museum in downtown Indianapolis.  This is a museum that holds so much information and many artifacts from Native Americans who lived in Indiana and from around the country and the world.  As I was looking at one of the exhibits, I read a quote from a Native American Cherokee descendent,

“Time as a river is a more Euro-American concept of time, with each event happening and passing on like a river flows downstream.

Time as a pond is a more Native American concept of time with everything happening on the same surface, in the same area…and each event is a ripple on the surface.” – Dave Edmunds (Cherokee), professor, 2001

I immediately thought to myself, “Yes, for me, time flows forward like a river…  That’s exactly how I view it!” (A very Euro-American viewpoint!)  Life keeps marching forward, no looking back, lest I turn into a pillar of salt like the wife in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  But something stops me here. I know I could be wrong as I begin again to study and search the family history trying to put the pieces together that weave a story of our family. I stop and think, “What if we really do ripple out from each other more like rings on a pond?” What if we don’t look back, but look around us and seek the circular pattern that is made when something strikes the water?

This image haunts me.  Circles all growing one inside of the other, rippling outward to a larger circle, a circle of life. I do find myself waking up at night and thinking about my ancestors being a part of my circle of life today.

As I stare out into the dark night sky, and see the many stars, I recall how God spoke to Abraham saying,

“And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;” –Genesis 26:4

I say a prayer to the God I know…and to the ancestors that can hear me.

“I want to know you! I want to know your stories, your loves, your music, and your faith! I want to KNOW you!  How have your lives influenced me and mine?

Reveal yourselves and your stories to me and I will record them so I and my own family don’t forget!”

And then I start to think about circles, and I envision one small stone dropped in a pond and the circles continuing to grow and spread all around, yet still in the same pond.  The stories of my families are numerous…just like the stars…yet somehow connected.  We are connected through our DNA and through the stories I know and the ones I only imagine. So I take a deep breath and realize that I am just one of the many descendants of Abraham perhaps.  It is a challenge of discovery for me. Where exactly did my circle in the pond begin?

As I study the different websites, I look at a random name of someone who could be a descendant.   I am looking at an unknowable face with a birth date and a date of death. Maybe I know the names of a few of their children and perhaps even more. At the same time, I know there are clues about that person that I am missing.  I so want to know.  I continue to hunt for them like I’m on a mysterious family treasure hunt.

I am hoping that one day it will all start to make sense for me, that I can accept the mystery and the questions that I have to leave unanswered. I must trust that this is the beginning of a marvelous story. It’s only when I realize that I am only at the beginning of this journey that I can actually sleep, trusting that the stories will be revealed to me as my research continues. The story of my families will unfold.

Somehow this circle of life image has struck a larger cord for me as well as I, we, face this New Year, 2017.  There are so many changes that are coming quickly down the river at us like a rapid current.  Our lives will be changed perhaps in ways we don’t want.  This can be from political changes that will undoubtedly happen this year in the coming weeks, or we could be blindsided by any number of different situations…I don’t want to be a “Negative Nelly” about it and I don’t want to look back.  Perhaps I just need to look around at the ripples instead of being washed away like a river.  “Bring it on!” I say to myself as I study my family tree and discover stories of families who continued to survive the concentric rings of life branching outward from Abraham to, me…to us.

Would I have followed my mariner husband across the ocean on a ship similar to the Mayflower to a new world with so many unknowns? Would I have survived the loss of several “Mary’s” as infants and still passed the beloved name on to the next female infant?  How many tears were shed for those babies? Would I have survived the “revolution” of the Revolutionary War? Would I have sworn my loyalty to a newly formed government and been willing to offer up even my life to support them? Would I, or even could I have continued to face life after half of my family died in the Long Crane Indian massacre? (Even as I think about how horrible it must have been, in looking at the history of how “we” (White settlers) took so much away from the Native Americans. Somehow I don’t blame them for fighting back!)

Would I have looked forward to a new regime when my two sons died of dysentery during the Civil War? Would I have been proud to earn a medal defending Washington DC during the Civil War when my very own brother had died in combat at Spotsylvania? Would I have carried on my life with breast cancer and two young children after my husband committed suicide with a shotgun at the start the Great Depression? These are just a few of the stories that I’ve discovered in reviewing my family history. These are some amazing stories of survival after losing much. And yet after all of that, my family is still here. We have survived, are surviving.

Madeline L’Engle in All that was Good writes

“If I affirm that the universe was created by a power of love, and that all creation is good.  I am not proclaiming safety. Safety was never part of the promise.  Creativity, yes; safety, no.  All creativity is dangerous…to write a story or paint a picture is to risk failure.  To love someone is to risk that you may not be loved in return, or that the love will die.  But love is worth the risk, and so is birth, its fulfillment.”

So I end these thoughts about beginnings with this simple prayer.

No matter what the future brings or what is about to happen in 2017:

Take the risk.

Rachel Held Evans on her blog encourages us to:

“Finish the book.  Pursue the relationship. Begin the ministry. Push the boundaries. Join the march. Write the screenplay.  Do the dishes. Plant the onions. Carry the child.  Roll around on the floor with your giggling toddler as if the world was even fractionally worthy of his presence.”

I could add to that as well; “Complete the family tree. Tell the stories.”

So I tell myself that this New Year is beginning and will be different.  There will be difficulties to survive amidst the laughter and love we enjoy.  I will continue to live my life and investigate my history. The sun will come up in the morning and set in the evenings.  The circles of life will continue to grow and carry us outward, onward, and forward. 

Gail Mehlan