What are our longstanding spiritual roots?
AM Psalm 78:1-39 • PM Psalm 78:40-72
Gen. 45:1-15 • 1 Cor. 7:32-40 • Mark 6:1-13
I became an Episcopalian in my early 20s, having grown up a Methodist, and one bit of conversation I like to have with people whom I meet in church grows out of this question: “Are you a cradle Episcopalian?” If the answer is no—and the responses I get usually suggest about one-half to two-thirds of the folks I ask grew up in some other faith—then I find that the person being queried often chooses to continue by describing what it was that drew him or her to the Anglican communion. (I’d be happy to share my “conversion narrative” with anyone who asks, by the way.)
I find that these conversations speak to a genuine spiritual need for me. I resonate with the words of the psalmist at the beginning of Psalm 78:
“I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord,
his power, and the wonders he has done.”
I want to know where I came from as a person of spirit, a person of faith. Though they were devout church-goers, I can’t recall either of my parents sharing with me or my siblings any actual stories about the roots of their faith. I only knew one grandparent. Both of my grandfathers died before I was born, and my paternal grandmother died when I was two, so I never had the chance to learn about their spiritual journeys. But I reckon that somewhere in all my forebears’ lives, each of them had tales of “the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.”
Twice in my career as an English teacher, I led students in substantial oral history projects. In both instances, I tried to impress on the students that if their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, whoever, had rich stories to tell about their lives, the students should record them, write them down, archive them somehow. Sadly, folks often take amazing, wonderful stories to the grave. Particularly if these stories are about the roots of faith, we might revel in not hiding them from our descendants, but instead in telling them to the next generation and beyond.
Written by David Jolliffe
This being St. Patrick’s Day, David notes that one of Patrick’s miracles involved encountering a group of hungry sailors and, voila, making a herd of pigs materialize to feed them. So, woo pig soiee to old St. Pat.