105. From one generation to the next

Eph 1: 4 – 6 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

It has been a strange week, or actually a strange couple of weeks.  Those of you who have followed along on Facebook, have read about my meeting my brother from my dad’s first marriage.  The meeting was decades in the making, and was a profound experience. For those who witnessed the three brothers, Robert, Laurie and myself, meeting for the first time, the event was remarkable for the level of familiarity the three of us showed.  As Laurie and I entered Robert’s home, the discussion started as if we were resuming a conversation from a few days previous.

          It was very clear as we spent the three days together that we were indeed brothers.  The commonalities ran from the professions we had chosen, to our quick wits, to having families that had no natural children – but each of us bringing kids into our lives as family – to physical similarities, and our escapades with alcohol and drugs,

          What also was striking is that each of us is in recovery, having a period of abstinence that are decades in length.  Which for me, being theologically obsessed, led to consideration of predetermination. 

One of the more repugnant doctrines that I had come across is the concept of pre-destination.  That prior to the start of the world, God chose only some of us, a select few, to enter Heaven.  Its repugnancy comes from there being those who will be born simply to fill the halls of hell.  After all, if you going to create eternal damnation, you will need people who will experience that fate.

Numbers 14:18 The LORD is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. But he does not excuse the guilty. He lays the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected--even children in the third and fourth generations.'

Then this morning I was in a different meeting of the family.  One of our members, has experienced a rougher than usual childhood, with rougher than usual consequences.  When one considers the generational traumas and calamities, it is indeed curious.

          My aunt, the matriarch of that branch of the family, became a widow five weeks into the life of her youngest child; a daughter.  My aunt coped with this tragedy, as the family tells it, by taking to her bed.  The youngest child spent a life of being passed from one family member to the next, with my aunt resistant to any one member of the family bringing her child into their home.

          This child, in turn, had her own children.  Each of those children, grew up distant from her.  The youngest child, a girl, had her own child.  Who, has been in the care of the government for the past year or so.  It is a pattern that can be seen without a lot of examination; grandmother, mother, and daughter.

          When you add the propensity for the family’s addictions and questionable mental health, the entire sense of trauma is greatly compounded.  One starts to see that the youngest in this chain had the deck stacked against her, and her child.

I doubt that it is the punishment of God being visited from one generation to the next. I can see why one might see it as such.  But there is something afoot.  What we do in this life, sets in motion so much else that we will never know. What also is striking is that the events that set in motion this chain of events started fifty four years ago. The woman for whom the meeting was for this morning never knew the person that made the decision that through cause and effect shaped her life.

         

I am left with a greater sense of humility.  The choices that I have made in my life for which I am so proud of seem less like the choices I made.  I am not sure what it was, or who it was that led to my being able to get clean, but I look at my family. Collectively we could create its own twelve step program. It seems that there are greater forces at work.

          I am also left with a mindfulness of what I do. 

          Although it seems to be clearest when the actions set in motion are damaging; that there are repercussions that cut across time and space.  But I also believe that it works it both ways.  That the good you do, or I do, ripples through the years, and distance, to have an impact on a distant life.  Or at least I hope it does.