When All Our Years Have Sped

a few mornings ago, i awakened from a deep sleep to find my mind racing with scattered thoughts.  perhaps a dream i couldn't remember was the beginning of my mind's busyness, but it was unusual to have so many things running through my head, seemingly coming out of nowhere.  some of the thoughts were of a trip that i am planning for my wife and myself, along with one of her sisters and brothers-in-law.  other thoughts were of stories about my family i heard as i was growing up.  these are stories that have been passed down orally, and suddenly i felt the need to preserve them for my children and for my nephew and his children who will be the only family members to carry on the family name to a future generation.

it's odd that i feel this compulsion to pass on what i know of my family's oral history just when i am feeling confident about living in the present moment.  i know that some of the need to write these tales down comes from having just celebrated my 76th birthday in the awareness that i may not have many more years left to tell the stories of my ancestors.  we can trace our family histories from sources like local records and gravestones, but there is more to the record that a list of who begat whom or was married to whom.  The little anecdotes about various family members tell us who we are because of who our forebears were and how they lived their lives, what they valued, and why they behaved as they did.

last week i wrote about memories, and this week my head is full of them begging to be written down.  these are not memories associated with things, like the bed in my garage that i'm giving away, but rather they are memories of people and the stories they told, memories that helped define me.  so i think it's important that future generations of our family know something of these stories that are our family history.  we say that everything is connected, and so the past is connected to the present, the past influences the future.  it is all a part of the continuum that is life.  we cannot live fully in the present moment if we do not know something of the past.  celebrating our histories is not the same as living in the past.

may we each relish those tidbits of information about those who have gone before us.  may we appreciate their joys and struggles.  may this present moment be lived more fully because we understand where we have come from.  may we honor the memories that have made us who we are.  shalom.