My brother gave me a DNA kit for my birthday because he wanted to “finally figure out where I really came from”. That must have been in my mind as I slept the old year gone and missed the dawning of the new. When I woke up this morning this was on my mind.
Ancestry and New Year 2018
Ancestry is in the blood they say and it makes our history clearer but…
Regnant Kings in castle keep have not more majesty than me who saw a mother doe and fawn make ripples in a pond that seconds ago was a mirror,
And Royalty in palaces have no better lineage than me who heard the wild goose cry one winter dawn as they made their pilgrimage.
I think I might have some Irish for pipe and harps make me cry,
and perhaps some Norseman blood abides for I who was born under prairie skies still dream of long ships and gracious tides.
At night just before I drift to sleep I often think I hear the creak of cordage and the harsh cry of setting course to a star not seen in this hemisphere.
No ancient magi’s “eureka” can match my silent cheer one velvet dusk by the fever trees when I watched gazelles on the run, and measured the cacophonous symphony of tree frogs begin precisely at the death of the sun.
Did some primordial ancestor of mine sit in the same kind of fear as their music stopped abruptly because of something only they could hear?
Was it a voice or a footfall or growl that silenced their song and made the hackles rise? And what relief and gulp of air as their song again raised to the skies.
If the silence of a myriad of animals we cannot even see can make our blood turn to ice what of truly monstrous things, that can kill you in a thrice?. What of those things that kill not by grinding sinew and bone, but by pounding down our spirit and making us feel alone. They kill us in our depth of soul and drive us to our knees and drag us to a dark place darker than the dark under the fever trees?
My first ancestors felt that fear under the trees of a garden fair. Fear of a voice that was calling them, a voice that had put them there.
Their silence broken by a cacophony of blame as they answered judicial questions – “what have you done”, “where are you? – And the words piled up in accusations plain that their fall was not their fault even condemning their Creator true.
And the destroyer of souls was cursed where he was, and our first parents cursed in what they were. Male and female who dressed themselves with leaves ripped from a tree were tossed from garden and paradise in garments made of fur. They lost the blest connection between mother doe and fawn and goose and the whole created order and their children followed in their steps as wilder children now cut loose.
Their progeny fared no better and generations passed under the sod and they lived by the rules of selfish greed as children cut loose from God.
And our ancestors are sea farers though we would not grant them that name, as they bobbed around like a cork on an ocean after forty days of rain.
Generations came and went and years and eras went by. New Years were feasted and old years passed away and we who came from one ancestor separated into tribe
and clan and tongue and nation moving further from one another. But a chosen people prayed and waited for the coming of a brother.
A brother to reconcile all things unto himself and ancestral feuds and battles gory would be wrapped up into his love and finished by his glory. A promised son would be born to us and to us a child be given. Bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh he would leave his home in heaven.
So last night while others celebrated the turn of a calendar page I was abed and dreaming of a coming glorious age when all conflicts will be over and peace and joy shall be the norm, and we shall rejoice in our prince of peace as we are gloriously reborn, into a new heaven and a new earth, the glorious home of a redeemed holy race, and praise before the throne of God and see each other face to face.
My future is in the alpha and omega the one who was and is and is to come, the first and the last and coming one and he redeemed my past.
Ancestry is in the blood they say and I believe it true, and I pray that in this brand new year you find that brother who shed his blood for you.
Those whose ancestors were cursed because of a forbidden tree by a cursed tree have been saved. The judge who hung upon the tree has all our transgressions waved and dropped them into the depths of a sea like our ancestors floated upon, and to our everlasting thanks and praise he declared them buried and gone.
Ancestry is in the blood they say and he shed his blood for you. Not only for you but for everyone who is born of Adams line. So as I dreamed of a blest new year my thought turned to all of you; brothers and sisters wherever you are in every nation and kingdom and clime, that your new year is blessed and the ones after that until the end of time.
Ancestry is in the blood they say and I believe it true, and I pray that in this brand new year you find that brother who shed his blood for you.
