The Importance of Lineage

Recently I have been watching quite a few episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? on YouTube. Last night I watched the UK episode for Patsy Kensit. She has a most interesting story.

Patsy’s parents are now both deceased and she knew very little of her family’s history. Her father James was associated with organized crime. They were two main organized crime families in the UK at the time and her father did business with both families. While her father did time in prison, her mother was left to take care of her and her brother James on her own.

Patsy was curious about her father’s parents and found that her grandfather James Sr., was also in and out of prison for theft & robbery while her father was a child. Finding this out was very discouraging for Patsy, leaving her to wonder if criminal activity was going to be a normal pattern in her family’s history.

Her grandfather James Sr., was the son of Thomas James Kensit. He was found to be the illegitimate son of James Dennis and Sarah Ann Kensit, who never married. Sarah Ann’s father was Thomas Kensit, who was a walking stick maker. Thomas helped raise his grandson and taught him the trade of being a walking stick maker too. This was a respectable trade to have, but when machines started to do this type of work faster and cheaper, it pushed the whole family into desperate poverty.

It was found that Thomas James Kensit’s biological father was James Dennis. James Dennis’ father James Dennis Sr. was a well-known and well-loved Sexton of Beckenham church.

The Beckenham church historian let Patsy read his obituary. She was so moved by the fact that a man related to her was so well respected in the church. Her emotional was so overwhelming that she could barely put a sentence together amidst the tears.

It made me wonder how a man’s choices several generations back could still affect the generations ahead of him. Do my choices today matter to people living 150 or 200 years from now?  My view is so narrow and small.

We know that Thomas James Kensit’s father was James Dennis and that his mother was Sarah Anne Kensit, the daughter of Thomas Kensit and Melissa Mayne. Melissa Mayne, was the daughter of the Rev. James Mayne. The Rev. James Mayne was the Curate of the St. Matthews Bethnal Green church. The parish had 62,000 parishioners, most of which were destitute.

While serving at St. Matthews, he baptized, married and buried people in large numbers. He set up a school and also started a relief fund for the destitute and poor. He even went to the royal family and requested money to help the large number of poor in Bethnal Green. He was quite a remarkable man who crusaded for his parishioners.

James Mayne was given an honorary Master of Arts Lambeth Degree in Divinity from the Arch Bishops of Canterbury. He went on to become a Vicar in a country church, dying while still serving. 

What a wonderful legacy.

I can’t help but wonder if having a wider picture of our historical heritage does something for us. Does it offer a better foundation? Does it give us better perspective? A bigger picture?

Sometimes it feels hard to get past our more current histories, or past one or two generations. These are most likely the relatives we have actually met. We know or have heard about their good and bad choices and often about their parents good and bad choices. But it is a very small part of larger story, maybe even the story of all human beings.

I do wonder how much this genealogical journey changed Patsy. How did she see herself when she was growing up? How did her father being in prison affect her relationally? How does her being married 4 times fit into the whole thing?

Her Wikipedia bio says that she started going to the Catholic Church after her mother died of breast cancer in 1993. Has she struggled with feeling like she belongs there? Does her knowledge that there are at least two very strong God-believing patriarchs in her lineage change anything for her?

I know that I have Quakers in my lineage. And I know that a few were imprisoned for their beliefs. It is why they came to America, for religious freedom. Does that change how I view my life? In a way it does. Their faith was strong and they moved despite the hardships that came along with it. That same strength is deep within me too. Is that DNA or the story of all humans?

Isn’t that why the Israelites were taught to remember? To look back at their lineage and see the choices their ancestors made. Not just the good choices either, because the bad choices can show us just as much as the good ones.

Day at Indiana Dunes

Beautiful Bike Riding Day

Good Communication?

Donald Miller recently wrote a good post on his blog about profanity. I have often wondered over the years why people swear so much. Sometimes at work I hear one of the men say F*** 4 times in a single sentence. 

Do these people know any other adjective, adverb, etc. as they often use F*** in every form of speech. To me they sound uneducated and it discredits whatever it is they are trying to say. 

Donald Miller's take on what it does to you as a communicator is interesting. You can read his articles on his storyline blog.

I Do

Attending a bridal shower should make you smile. It is a time in a girl’s life that is cause for joyous celebration. She will soon be married and with the simple words, “I do” begin a wondrous journey with the man she loves.

It isn’t that I haven’t felt joy for a bride-to-be; it is just that it sometimes stirs up many emotions within me. Just a few weeks ago I attended a bridal shower for a young lady at church. I wished that I had felt more joy, especially since I really like this couple and want good for them as they start their life together.  

Instead, in the days following I spiraled into a deeper loneliness than I had already been feeling. All my desires to be married were torn open; mixed together with my longings to be celebrating these types of milestones with my own children. It was an emotional upheaval that quite frankly took me by surprise.

I have been plagued by loneliness for several months now, so last week in an attempt to kind of think through what I am feeling, I of all things, googled loneliness. I can’t tell you the number of articles about “overcoming” or “fixing” loneliness; none of which really helped. The Christian sites that said God is the only one that can fill our loneliness weren't very helpful either. It felt like it these sites were bypassing something important. I wanted to walk through it, not around it.

Recently I have noticed that my loneliness has turned to cynicism and negativity. My conversations with people seem to be filled with judgmental comments toward myself and toward others. It feels ugly; it is ugly. I am sure others must tire of my negative chatter, I don’t even enjoy being with myself when I am this way.

So where is my heart? Life does feel unfair… my friend’s children are graduating, getting married and soon there will be grandchildren in their lives. This provokes something deep within me: a longing for life to be different, actually a demand that life be different. I grieve. In many ways I am alone in this world and it is unfair. Most of the time, I don’t get it.

But the negative ways in which I interact with others in the middle of it bothers me. I wonder if there is something God wants me to see in the middle of what I am feeling. Do I feel like God owes me these things? If I am honest, I do. I am often standing shaking my fists at God, demanding He make my life less lonely.

I don’t like it much, but I wonder if my anger at the loneliness and my general negativity are a path that could bring my demand into the light? I do.        

Bread and Circuses

There is so much going on in the lives of my friends. There is so much to grieve over and so much to pray about: broken relationships, battered relationships, loss, exhaustion, health issues, back injuries, foot injuries, business struggles, job insecurities, financial battles, loneliness, anger, etc. It feels so overwhelming at times. I want life to work for me and for those I care about. It is hard some days to just get up and keep moving knowing the brokenness of the lives around me.

 A friend gave me the book, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, for my birthday and I have been slowly reading it. There is one prayer called, We are much drawn to circuses, that has struck me for some reason. 

The beginning of the prayer talks of our need for bread and for circuses. It goes on to speak of our desire and our imagined control over getting our need met, followed closely by a prayer to deliver us from our self-fulfilling ways.

He then calls us to thank God for His provision, and to plead with God to lessen our anxieties over our perceived need. All so that we can be liberated. I love these thoughts, they deeply move me.

The end of his prayer is humorous and touching, in fact it was the ending that pulled me in. He closes his prayer with, We pray in the name of Jesus who, as far as we know, never went to the circus. Amen.

I love it. Jesus is not about a grand production, He is about loving us well. It keeps coming back to being faithful, to trusting that God will provide what we need out of His love for us. There is such bondage trying to make life work and such freedom in being grateful for what He has given us. Thank God for His resurrection power! Easter is a comin’ 

Save me Father

I don’t understand your ways Lord!

Why You would let a child grow up without a father?

Why You would allow children to accuse their father unjustly?

Fix it God. Fix these broken relationships!

Don’t leave me dangling here in this painful abyss,

Angrily waiting for something that only You can mend.

    

So what does faith look like in this mess?

Why does it have to look like this?

Where are You? Can’t You see my pain?

I’m thrashing about with my heart flailing!

Comfort me! Hold me!

Keep me from harming those I love!

I will never be able to see the good in being fatherless

I will never be able to see the good in broken relationships

I will never be able to see how this is for my good.

Yet Father, I know You are good.

You are compassionate.

You are loving.

So I will lift my hands to You and praise You!

O God, turn toward me in my anger

Show me compassion and save me.