Knowing Your Roots - November 2
Today’s Readings: Psalm 130; Wisdom 3:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; John 5:24-27
Today’s Reflection
Today is All Souls’ Day, known in Mexican and Mexican-American culture as la Día de los Muertos. For those who celebrate this day, a pilgrimage to the cemetery where family members are buried is one part of the celebrations. It is a day to celebrate the memories of those who have been a part of our lives as well as our family’s history through the generations—a day to give thanks for knowing who we are and where we come from.
Since moving to Alabama, my daughters and I have twice driven the 10+ hour drive to visit my parents in Florida. In March, on our way back to Birmingham, the route I chose took us on small Georgia state roads, one of which went right through the town where my dad grew up, Cuthbert, a very small town in rural, southwest Georgia. I wanted my daughters to see where Poppy grew up, and where I used to go a few times a year to visit my Granny and Granddaddy Bridges. As it turned out, the Georgia highway we were following went right by the cemetery where they are buried. Since there was still some time before sunset, we decided to get out of the car and walk through the cemetery to find their gravesite. We ended up walking all around it for about half an hour and never could find their marker, but it felt important to make the effort.
Once we gave up searching for their grave, we took a little detour to drive through the town square and then over to Highland Avenue, where they lived. As we kept driving toward Birmingham, the road also took us through Eufaula, where my grandparents met and married back in the 1940s, just before Granddaddy enlisted in the Army in World War II. On another trip to Florida this fall, my daughter and I drove home through Richland, the even tinier town where Granddaddy grew up, also in southwest Georgia. I pointed out buildings, including the small downtown, that had stood when he grew up there, and tried to picture what it had been like for him there in the 1920s and 1930s. It’s very important, as I told my daughters that day, to know where they come from, and to be able to imagine where their grandfather grew up and where their great-grandparents used to live.
That little cemetery detour reminded me of the times my dad would take us on detours into cemeteries when my dad went through a long genealogy phase for several years during my growing up. We went to the cemetery in Richland, Georgia, where several generations of the Bridges side lived in the 1800s and 1900s, and we went to some cemeteries in northern Louisiana, where some Bridges relations moved after getting a land grant after the Civil War, and to graveyards in Kentucky where my mother’s family has lived for many generations.
The result of all this genealogical detective work is that my dad made these two thick books, one for me and one for my brother, that gives us many specific details of who our people were in generations past. I know that relatives on my Granny Bridges’ side (the Pugh side) ended up in south Alabama, but they came there from South Carolina and before that Virginia and Wales. I know that another ancestor was a spy in the Revolutionary War, and that I had ancestors who served on both sides in the Civil War And I know that relatives on Grandpa Barrick’s side (my mom’s dad’s family) came to Virginia from England in the 1620s, and that one of them may have been a captain on one of the boats that brought people there.
One fact that was especially fascinating for me to learn, as I re-read my family tree book several years ago right before I left for seminary, is that it turns out that I am not the first Anglican person in our family of Methodists and Baptists. Thanks to all the genealogical work of my mom’s uncle, we know of Barrick relatives who were baptized in Christ Church Middlesex, a Church of England congregation in the Virginia Tidewater so long ago that the Episcopal church didn’t yet exist. Today that church is part of the Episcopal Church. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry made a visit there to help them celebrate their 350th anniversary back in 2016. I would love to visit that church next time I am in Virginia, to give thanks for those long-ago relatives who shared the same faith that I have today.
Today I give thanks for the souls of all those who have gone for us, and especially those who have laid the groundwork for the faith we now share.
—Becky+
Collect for All Souls’ Day
O God, the Maker and Redeemer of all believers: Grant to the faithful departed the unsearchable benefits of the passion of your Son; that on the day of his appearing they may be manifested as your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever. Amen.
Questions for Self-Reflection
Who comes to mind for you when you think of remembering people from generations past? What aspects of their lives do you see living on in you and later generations? What aspects of your life do you hope that people will remember about you and live on in the memories and lives of those who follow?
Daily Challenge
As we reflect on the scriptures appointed for All Souls’ Day, take some time today to look back at family photos and maybe even your own family tree. Reflect on the faces you see, the names and dates, the births and baptisms, and all the other details that led to you to being who you are and where you are today.