There are things that tie the generations together, and I think of those I’m tied to as a chain of paper dolls cut out of newspaper. Mother used to cut them for me out of the Battle Creek Enquirer and News when she was cutting patterns for sewing. Both the paper dolls and the patterns amazed me.
The patterns she would cut from the folded edges of the paper, and by some miracle, the cloth she would then cut from the pattern would fit to the next piece and suddenly as she sewed them together, take shape as a dress, blouse or skirt that fit our bodies perfectly and looked as professional as any “store-bought” garment.
The paper dolls she cut, too, from the folded edge--in fact, many folds. She would cut only half a person as if the doll was hiding behind the paper and only half of her was showing. But by what seemed to me some miracle, when mother unfolded the layers of paper, there was a chain of dancing girls, all holding hands like the dancers do around the May pole in their celebration of spring!
It seems as I look back over my life that I am also in some great dance, connected hand to hand to the strong women and men that preceded me. Hand to hand they have passed on to me their treasures of experiences, skills, and wisdom that they mostly learned the hard way. They modeled integrity, honesty, hard work, and compassion. Our table is often a testimony to the foods they loved to cook. My walks through the woods are informed by the names of trees and wildflowers they taught me to recognize or the footprints of animals they taught me to know. They taught me to sew, paint, to love color, and plant flowers. All taught me to endure, persist, hope, and, when necessary, wait. They taught me to pray. Some of them taught me what not to do and say.
Every day I feel them holding my hand, and my parents’ hands and my grandparents’ hands. I hope my daughters and son learned from me a few of the delights and disciplines these generations have handed down to me. And I hope they have also learned the dance steps of joy that these who came before taught me.
In his book The Wisdom Pattern, Richard Rohr writes, “We must hold the hands of both ancestors and children—hold them well....The chain of being is even longer and bigger than us church folks imagined—and we best come to the telescope and microscope with our shoes off....”
In this time of division and polarization, it seems someone has torn the chain of connectedness apart. Even families seem to have lost the ability to recognize the ties that bind, ties that should transcend the rancor of social media and loud discourse and hold to things eternal.
Maybe it’s time to make some people-chains so that we can recognize once more that we are cut from one sheet of paper; we are connected. Maybe the sequester of COVID was an unlikely gift that shut us in with the people we most love. At least it was a good time to practice, on a small scale, those qualities that would re-connect us to the larger community Jesus taught us to love: qualities like forgiveness, patience, compassion, self-control, kindness. Right now it is assignment enough to love those who love us. Then, perhaps, we will have sharpened the tools for daring to love our enemies and see that they are also connected to us.
