This week: Shaking the Family Tree Edited by: Sophy  
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Hi, I'm Sophy ~ your editor for this edition of the Spiritual Newsletter.
The Rev. Scotty McLennan, author of the book Finding Your Religion, compares humanity's innate need for spiritual searching to climbing a mountain. In his view, we are all endeavoring to climb the same figurative mountain in our search for the divine, we just may take different ways to get there. In other words, there is one "God," but many paths. I honor whatever path or paths you have chosen to climb that mountain in your quest for the Sacred.  |
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Shaking the Family Tree
My parents were both the oldest children of depression era families. Mom was born in California, while Dad was born in Oklahoma - and before they died, they shared what information they knew about our family tree.
They knew the most about my paternal and maternal grandmothers sides of the family, but little about my maternal grandfather's branch of the family tree, and next to nothing about my paternal grandfather's family because he died when my father was 5 and his mother remarried and moved away soon after. In going through things at my mother's house after her death almost 10 years ago, my sister and I found boxes and boxes of unorganized family history from her side of the family. Over time, as we have sorted through the boxes, we began what has been a fascinating journey of putting missing puzzle pieces together, with the help of ancestry websites and DNA testing. This process not only brought us closer to each other, but also to our ancestors and our own spiritual roots.
While researching our family tree online, I discovered my maternal 8th Great Grandfather Robert became one of the founders of Salisbury, Massachusetts soon after he came across the pond from England in 1635. In fact, so far he has turned out to be one of my most well-known and heroic ancestors. He not only defended women accused of witchcraft, but also stood up for religious freedom by refusing to whip three Quaker women who had been arrested for sharing their faith - instead he let them go, was was later excommunicated from his church for doing so. He was a hero of his time.
Of course, as I delved more into roots, I knew there were bound to be ancestors I’d be less proud of than my 8th Great Grandfather. As with most whose family lines have been in the US for several generations, I’ve come across ancestors who fought for the Union Army during the Civil War, as well as those who fought for the Confederate Army. My 5th Great Grandfather Joseph lived a long and fruitful life in Virginia for 90 years. Born around 1753, he fought with the Virginia Militia during the Revolutionary War. He had nine children, and when he died he left his 8 slaves to his sons. We only know their first names – Danial, Booker, Lavinia, Mary, Margaret, Bill, Eliza, and Jordan. Did they live long enough to see their freedom? One hopes the younger ones did – though emancipation certainly didn’t mean they had an easy life after they were free. Danial and Booker and Lavinia and Mary and Margaret and Bill and Eliza and Jordan are as much a part of my family history as Robert and Joseph – though because they were considered property and not equal in the eyes of the law, there are few, if any records of them beyond Joseph’s will. In the 1830 and 1840 Census they aren't even listed by name – just a tally mark on a page based on their age-range and gender. 
Closer to my own recent past, I discovered things about both of my grandmothers I hadn't known - about the difficult lives they lived before they married and had children. And I discovered an entire family my father never knew after his own father died in 1933, including his first cousin who I spoke to by phone. He filled me in on some family details and shared photos of his grandparents and aunts/uncles - and we discovered they (my father and his cousin) had much in common, including their musical talents. How I wish they could have met!
This entire experience has touched me spiritually - knowing what my forbears experienced and believed and did with their own lives have all culminated in making me who I am today. And there is something profoundly spiritual about that - a sense of knowing where I came from, who stands behind and beside me, the "river of souls" who accompany me on my own life journey. Additionally, the result of my family tree exploration has inspired my writing muse. There are so many possibilities to explore - poetry, biographical sketches, memoirs, and historical fiction, to name a few. I'd love to hear from you if you've had a similar experience with ancestry research, and how it may have impacted not only your spiritual sense of self, but also your writing.
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Below you'll find some spiritual offerings from other WDC members. Please let the folks know if you read their piece by leaving a thoughtful comment or review.
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Here is a response to my last newsletter "Spiritual Newsletter (February 3, 2021)" about "The Coexistence of Faith and Science" -
From Prosperous Snow celebrating 
Here is an essay about the evolution of my faith.
Love it, thank you so much!
   
From Quick-Quill 
When I was young I believed everything I was told. When I was a teen I rebelled against that upbringing and the rules. Then as a young mom I had to decide if I was going to allow people to drive me away from my church or stick to be beliefs. Later on I came to understand tradition and doctrine are different. Now that I’m old I’ve settled in to knowing my goal is heaven. Getting there is worth everything. Yes, my relationship with God and my church has evolved.
Thank you for your response and for sharing.
From alastaire
There is more spirituality than what you see with your eyes. I want to cover this issue from a scientific point of view and since the issue of botany came up, I will use it to demonstrate this. I love to take photographs of beautiful flowers in a garden. There was a stage where I took a beautiful bloomed flower with a dead flower in the same frame. You might say that is the end of the story and that like the other flower, the fully bloomed flower will also crumble and die. Nothing more to say.
However, there is a period when the both flowers come to life again. What happened in the period between life and death? Through science the flowers must have been promulgated back to life. While this is true, science itself has to be explained. There is another "factor" that must come into play! That "factor" weighs heavily on the side of spirituality. That is what Darwin would have struggled with as a theologian, but a few unschooled fishermen, a few shepherds and a few farmers can explain it perfectly! Who knows?
Thanks so much for sharing!
Please keep your comments and suggestions coming! Until next time! Sophy |
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Spiritual: March 03, 2021 Issue [#10638]
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