"Oh darling, do try and be more sensible, won't you? After all, a husband has his
interests: his dogs, his shooting, his racing. Shall a wife have none of her own? Off you go,
there's a good fellow! ... Be sure to tell the vicar's clerk I require two copies of that
birth record, both certified. You won't forget, will you darling? Two certified copies!"
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"Blimey! I've run out of ink! Just as I was dashing off a letter to cousin Basil in
Dorchester! A right sporting gesture too, I might add, considering that rapscallion owes me one! A cousin a day
keeps the doldrums away, wot? ... I say, Stevens, hand me that bottle there, will you? ... Not
that one, you nit!"
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"Dear, dear little Chatsworth! I realize that tracing one's ancestry can be a ghastly bore at times, but I daresay we shan't
make any progress at all if you persist in ignoring my queries! Now then, as to your sire, we have established that
he was most likely ... Chatsworth?"
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GenSpirit Blog
Exploring the interface between
genealogy and spirituality
Rev. Sue Annabrooke Jones
25 April 2010
Infinity. The representations of it abound in our world: the Celtic knot, the
figure eight turned on its side, two mirrors facing each other.
I once had a baby mug that aptly expressed the concept. It bore a picture of
a monkey drinking from the same mug, which in turn bore the same image, then another, ad infinitum. I probably drank
from that mug thousands of times, but I never made an infinity connection with it.
My first encounter with the infinite occurred when I was six or seven years old,
after playing with a friend who lived down the street in suburban Los Angeles, where I grew up. She owned some terrific board
games, so sometimes instead of enjoying the California sunshine, we would stretch out on her thickly carpeted living room
floor and play Candy Land, Uncle Wiggily or Chutes and Ladders.
While we played, my friend's mother bustled about in the background, cooking, ironing
and cleaning house (which is how most women spent their days in the 1950s). Occasionally, she would pass through the living room and speak
to my friend in her heavy Belgian accent, which always amused me. She had trouble pronouncing the th dipthong
and would say "doze" for those, and "tick" for thick. On this particular morning, she entered the living room, then stopped abruptly,
not far from where we played. I glanced up to see her looking intently at me. "Are you Belgian?" she asked.
Was I? It seemed unlikely. I knew I'd been born in California, and I talked like everyone
else around me. "No, I don't think so," I replied.
"I tink you are," she said, touching her cheek with her forefinger, "you have da Belgian
complection." I stared blankly at her. "You ask your mudder," she continued with a confident nod, "ask her if you are
Belgian."
I did ask my mother, who surprised me by answering, "Yes, how did you know that?" I told her how
our neighbor had guessed it. That's when I learned that my grandfather, my mother's father, was of Belgian descent.
Later that day, as I stared out my window digesting this new information — that there was something called Belgian skin, that it
was recognizable, and that I had it — I could sense an even greater idea forming in the back of my mind. Gradually, it loomed larger,
until it crowded out the first thought entirely: the understanding that my grandparents had parents of their own,
and grandparents too, and so on. I "came from" these people, people unknown, from places far away, long ago. How far back, I wondered?
As I tried to imagine these ancestors of mine stretching back further and futher into the mists of time, I entered another zone, coming
face to face with the great mystery of time itself.
I regard myself as an "everyday mystic," and I know there are countless others living on our planet
at this time who embrace mysticism to one degree or another. The old idea that only a monk or nun, a saint, a shaman, a boddhisatva or a
charismatic prophet is privy to the mystical side of spirituality is fading away. Why? Because we're wired for it, and because
modern life affords us some measure of free personal time, and a few of us will choose to spend at least part of it in meditation and
contemplation. What we bring back from those explorations into the nature of reality are gifts to cherish.
What about you? Have you ever contemplated the infinite in connection with ancestral research?
What was that like? Have you had any personal experiences with the mysteries of time in connection with genealogy? I'll post these
questions to the Yahoo GenSpirit Group for discussion. You can join by clicking the button at top left
or go there now. See you there! — SAJ
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