Wednesday December 30, 2009
Keeping our ancestors alive
By Jim Taylor
When my wife Joan was about four years old, her father made her a doll crib. She treasured it. When Joan grew up and left home, her parents gave the crib to a young niece. But she always knew the crib was Joan’s.
Last year that niece telephoned Joan. “I thought we had lost your old crib,” she said, “but I found it. Do you want it back?”
The old crib had been repainted, several times. Its joints were breaking apart. But it was still the beloved old crib.
Over the summer, Joan stripped many layers of paint. She sanded the bare wood smooth again. She repainted it its original white. She made a new mattress for it, sewed two new sheets and a pillow with lace trim, even stitched a tiny quilt.
We took the refurbished crib to Edmonton as a Christmas present for five-year-old Katherine.
“Your great-grandfather made this crib,” Joan explained.
Katherine was, I regret to say, unimpressed. Katherine preferred her kiddie rock-star guitar, or the Barbie-doll that sang a single mindless tune into a karaoke microphone.
After all, neither the crib nor the doll lying in it did anything. They didn’t make sounds, they didn’t dance, they didn’t offer interactive beeps – they just, well, lay there…
Does anyone care?
I admit that I was disappointed. Somehow, I expected Katherine to feel thrilled at receiving something that had already survived three generations.
But history, I realize, means little to a generation raised on instant everything.
And my generation has not succeeding in bringing the past alive, I regret.
We tend to think that we must teach the past as academic data and dates. Facts – the Taylors came from Scotland, the Andersons from Sweden, the Rentz family from Ohio, the Frackeltons from Northern Ireland…. Assorted dates – 1800, 1827, 1907, 1910, 1930….
But it’s stories that make the past come to life. Stories about the carpenter who had to make his own tools. The merchant who opened the bank’s very first account. The missionary who had given up hopes of getting married…
We need to tell these stories until they become so familiar they form a background to every daily activity, a running counterpoint to life’s familiar themes.
We might learn something from what we often consider more primitive societies. In a sense, they don’t just know about their ancestors – they are their ancestors. Biblical people, for example, didn’t just learn about Abraham and Jacob and Moses, about Sarah and Rachel and Esther. They made no distinction between themselves and their ancestors.
This integration of past and present is not always benign. Neighbours will get along without violence for generations – in Bosnia or Northern Ireland or Africa — until circumstances re-ignite their forebears’ feuds..
Because the feuds were kept alive by the stories they told.
That’s not good. But neither is it good to ignore our past, to live in a world that knows nothing but the present.
When we have no past, we cannot learn from it.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn
I’m regularly surprised by the kind of columns that generate mail. For example, I thought of last week’s column, on secular and religious Christmas songs, as a kind of throwaway column. But your responses suggest that it struck some kind of responsive chord (pun intended).
James Harbeck noted that “the supposed hidden religious symbolism in ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ was invented long after the song was written and was laid on it schematically for didactic purposes — and the correspondences are, as one may note, often quite weak and arbitrary. The song can’t really be said to have hidden religious symbolism, only to have been used post facto for symbolic purposes.”
John Shearman wrote, “I am sure you are aware that the word ‘carol’ comes from its French root which meant "singing joyfully and dancing in a ring." It was first used in 1300 according to the OED. But were you also aware that many — if not most – -of the songs for Christmas of a non-religious nature were written by Jewish composers? What do you make of that? Was it part of the commercialization of Christmas that emanated from New York’s Madison Avenue advertising mania?”
John Zavitz (of Canton, Georgia) also reminded me of some Christmas songs being written by Jewish composers. “Incidentally, ‘White Christmas’ was written by a nice Jewish boy in Beverly Hills, CA. It, like ‘Jingle Bells’ is not about the birth of another Jewish boy in a far off village in the Far East. It’s crass commercialism in every sense. Bing sold it. We bought it.”
John went on take a blast at church music generally: “Most congregations, both RC and Protestant, are led in their music by ill-equipped amateurs who, having learned by rote… pass on their lack of talent to those in the pew.Having worked for nearly 50 years with ministers who, for the most part, didn’t know a minim from a hemi-demi-quaver and worked, with diligence, to restrict the efforts at exuberance of their music directors, I am well acquainted with the short-comings.
No, Jim, nothing has happened to singing. We have allowed business and ignorance to take over the art. . A good music director, even a minister who knows the joy of singing, could have easily turned We Three Kings into a rollicking camel race.
“There are two important themes here,” wrote Karen Stoner, “and I’m with your views on both of them.
“First, people just don’t sing enough. I grew up with spontaneous singers. It’s what we DID: in the car on trips, in the kitchen, during holidays, before/during/after church, at the local theatre with a piano or other instrument on special occasions, at the giant theatre in Columbus with a famous organist surrounding a silent film or summer film, to make people feel better, to make a visit special with long-lost relatives gathering around a piano (sometimes a player piano), or just because we wanted to sing. In my married home, I sang my children to sleep, I sang for the pure joy of singing, I joined choirs, I sang in settings needing a singer!! My father’s side was especially fond of music…You just can’t replace the human voice, however tuneful or tuneless, with any apparatus. Here in the States we enjoyed a week-long new show recently called "The Sing Off", in which the voice was the only permitted instrument…and it provided all sorts of harmonies and background making you believe there was an orchestra up there!!
“Secondly, church has become an especially stuffy place for so many people. Music is a part of that. Now I know that many people crave the reflective side or worship, and we can provide that. I worshipped in a very different setting with a friend, and the people never gave me time to reflect, even during prayer, as they were always joyful (clapping, singing, smiling, dancing) and ’speaking in tongues.’ But, the experience in many churches is so still, so solemn, that I can’t really come with frequency. People are singing ‘Joy to the World,’ as you say, without showing the joy.
“The Welsh hymn, ‘God of Grace and God of Glory,’ is another rousing one…and based on a drinking song!! I needed to add that comment, which reminded me of the many songs we deem great for church which started out as tavern tunes!!”
Jim Henderschedt offered some consolation:” At least you are allowed to sing Christmas Carols during Advent. Most Lutheran pastors is this part of God’s world have their sphincters clenched so tight that nothing resembling Christmas should be done, seen, or sung before December 24!”
Trina Norman wrote, “There are so many beautiful songs out there that still give a wonderful message. In particular I have been listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s album ‘Come Darkness, Come Light’ on which she sings some old and not often heard carols as well as some written by herself and friends. Two of the songs have a wonderful message, ‘Come Darkness Come Light’ and ‘Bells are Ringing’ both address more current problems and are very welcoming to all.”
Steve Roney, as usual, offered an alternate perspective: “I think we have too little, not too much, religion in our lives, and I don’t want to waste my time singing Christmas carols that miss the main point. Nothing wrong with them morally, or anything like that. Just that they are vapid and meaningless.”
Steve also questioned my comment, “We have a tendency to compare _our_ best with _their_ worst.”
“We also have an equal and opposite tendency to Romanticize unfamiliar cultures, and imagine in them all the good things we think missing from our own. I think Buddhism has very much benefitted from this latter tendency in the modern West; while, by comparison, Islam has suffered from the opposite problem you point out.”
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About My Books
Over the years, I think I have written (or ghostwritten) about 17 books. Several of them (mercifully) are no longer available from any source. But here’s a listing of those that are still available. The ones marked “WLB”, you can order from Wood Lake Books, either on-line at http://www.woodlakebooks.com, or call Wood Lake Books directly at 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-654-5129 (Pilgrim Press) in the U.S. The ones marked “JT only” are now available only directly from me — as collector’s items, I price them all at $25 Cdn.
- Everyday God: Insights from the Ordinary
- Worlds in One
- Chance
- Seeing the Mystery: Exploring Christian Faith through the Eyes of Artists,
- Surviving Death
- Everyday Psalms
- Everyday Parables
- Letters to Stephen
- A New Understanding of Virtue and Vice
- Precious Days and Practical Love: Caring for an Aging Parent
- for Beginners
- Spirituality of Pets
(1981 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)
(1985, JT only)
(1989, JT only)
(1990, with William S. Taylor, JT only)
(1993, JT only)
(1994 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)
(1995 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)
(1996, WLB, $17.95)
(1997, WLB, $19.95)
(1999, WLB, $19.95)
(2001, WLB, $11.95)
(2006, WLB, $39)
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
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For a lighter look at life, faith, and the lectionary, I recommend my friend Ralph Milton’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it by sending a note to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
For other web links worth pursuing, try
- Charlene Fairchild’s United Online site,
- David Keating’s “SeemslikeGod” page
- The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity home page
- Dan Strizek’s Gathering Place for Creation Spirituality
- Alva Wood’s satiric stories about small town attitudes and bumbling bureaucrats are not particularly religious, but good fun anyway; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
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