When I look in the mirror these days, I see pieces of other
faces looking back at me. Grandma’s hooded eyes, Aunt Dada’s mouth filled with
Mama’s teeth, Daddy’s salt and pepper hair as well as his freckles…I am a
living sampler bearing the signs and shapes and sounds of all who have gone
before. It is like an unruly Mardi Gras parade of all the characters in my
past. My children and their children
carry these same reminders of family they never knew. Sometimes these bits and
pieces of the past can reassemble in such a way that someone is said to be a
carbon copy of a forbear. Unsettling and reassuring, this embodiment of our
past tickles my fancy.
Scientists are delving into the mysteries of the brain. New
discoveries will help us understand all sorts of disease as well as explain the
biological inner workings of our lumpy grey matter. Our brains, like our bodies
and faces, carry the memory of our ancient families and our current ones. Did
my instinctive feel for and love of music come from a great-grandmother I never
knew who was an opera singer? I wonder if she felt the same rush of emotion I
feel when I hear the transcendent sound of voices singing the Hallelujah
Chorus. My children tell me I never
cooked like other moms. There was always something new and alarming served at
the dinner table. Was that my Great-Aunt Dada, an accomplished cook, trying to
be reborn? We are pieces of our past reassembled in a new pattern that is not
so new after all.
Some of us are answer seekers. Like Thomas the Doubting
Disciple and Bill Nye the Science Guy, we need to know how and why and when and
where. This quest for understanding has produced wonderful knowledge… penicillin,
rocket ships, telescopes. Question askers of a different sort create art of all
kinds as they seek to express the river of new life that runs through their
souls. There are those among us who use words to try to capture the mysteries
of our Source, to ask the God questions in language. And, there are those who
try to experience God through music, meditation, ritual, worship, sweat lodges,
whirling to an inner need to feel and taste and touch the Untouchable.
Whatever our past, however our brains are wired, whoever we
are a compilation of, we are all a grand pastiche, a mixed media collage of a
God who has no beginning and no end.
What a lovely puzzle this is, one we cannot see entirely put together on
the card table, but beautiful nonetheless.
So, I live with the mysteries of how I came to be who I am and how you
came to be who you are. I rest in the assurance that we are all kin. Like family
all over the world, we are all a little crazy and a little wise, but we belong
to each other. Someday we will understand but for now, I am grateful for my
family and grateful for all the ways of being in this world.
God, I give thanks for the Mardi Gras parade of my past… all
of those whose memories I carry with me, known and unknown. Most of all though, I am grateful for your
memory and your presence in my life’s parade. Love you…
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