trees

NOTES ON A FAMILY TREE

Ancestry, art, Children, Creativity, Family, Forgiveness, home, Love, New Year, Racism, trees, Uncategorized

DeLee: In This Place, acrylic on canvas, 30 x40, $350

I’m finishing up my grandchildren’s family history scrapbooks. I got to thinking about our family tree. The high holy days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and the year end festivities bring families together. This often results in a few fireworks or flamethrowers at some of these gatherings. I suspect alcohol may be involved in some of this, but old grudges and scores, which haven’t been settled in decades, won’t get settled on this holiday either. 

My mother’s sister claimed our family goes back to the Baronial Order of the Magna Charter. These are a distinct group of the descendants of the signers of the 1215 document, in which King John of England granted the principles of constitutional law. The most important was each person, even the king, was subject to the law. 

For my family, the real importance was our Anglo Saxon ancestry was ancient and noble, as well as white. Our linage also qualifies us for membership in the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution, and DOC, Daughters of the Confederacy, two more all white groups. Both of these are institutions of a bye gone age and a bifurcated society. I have folks in my family tree who liked to put on “airs,” as folks in the country like to say. All the old ones in my family tree went to their graves holding these beliefs firmly. I loved them anyway. 

Trees are meant to live by breathing fresh air and growing new leaves and branches. Even if trees only propagate by pollinating with their own kind, each tree is part of a giant forest of many species of trees. If a forest were a monoculture, a single disease or pest could wipe out the entire growth. If the forest consists of many different plants and trees, the destructive organism has to work very hard to destroy the whole, for the different and unlike species provide protection for one another. The variety of a diverse culture is its strength. 

If we human creatures took note of our surroundings more, we would not fear the Others, but would embrace them. We would make them our friends, and we’d defend one another from harm. 

The next generation of my family tree, I hope, is learning to love the other families of this diverse and wonderful world. I hope the branches of your family tree are open, growing, and renewing. Perhaps your branches can provide a shelter and make America friends again. 

THE MOMENT BEFORE 

art, Creativity, Faith, nature, Painting, Spirituality, texas

 

The moment before my daughter came into this world, my husband reminded me of the doctor’s orders: “Whatever you do, don’t push!”

“Don’t tell me (horrible expletive deleted) not to push! I’ll (more expletives deleted) push if I want to! His look of shock and horror lasted only seconds before he turned for the hallway door to shout, “I think this baby is coming now!”

We had been at the hospital all day long waiting to induce my labor. The nurses misunderstood my doctor’s orders, so they only gave me a bit of the oxytocin, but not enough to start the cramping of my womb. I felt a mild twinge, but nothing exciting was on the program at zero dark thirty in the morning. Coffee break came and went. My husband ate lunch as I sucked on a damp wash rag. Hospital food never looked so good.

Exhausted, I napped in the afternoon.  Sometime after five, my doctor made his evening rounds  “Why hasn’t this woman had her baby yet? Crank it up!”

Normal labor sneaks up on a woman. My own mother said she attended a picnic the day before my birth, so she thought the initial twinges of labor were a spot of indigestion from the day before. My daddy, who was a doctor, always got a good laugh from mother’s self diagnosing, for indigestion comes sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, labor moves progressively from mild to intense and from widely spaced to closely packed. The moment a child enters this world is still unique. When the nurse turned the handle on the oxytocin, a flood of chemicals hit my blood stream all at once. In a moment, I knew I had been hit by a freight train. I went from zero to ten on the pain scale instantly. I was glad my husband had his senses about him, because mine had been knocked to Pluto, which was still a planet back in these ancient times.

When the moment cane for me to push, I knew it was time. To live in a state of awareness and to be open to the information and stimuli all about us is to live in the present moment  some say, “I couldn’t do this, for I would go crazy with all the details to be sorted out!” I think those who live in the present moment realize the unity of all things. Some call it the ONE, while others see the ONE who makes all things. As an artist, I see the beauty that flows through all things. As a person of faith, I see images which remind me of stories from my holy scriptures. The cloud in Christian symbolism represents God’s presence, for God, in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, led the Hebrew people during the wilderness wandering. In the baptism of Jesus, the cloud opens to reveal the Holy Spirit in a bodily form, like a dove.
“And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.””  (Mark 1:10-11)

in the moments when we take a stand, walk outside of our comfort zone, stretch our boundaries, our reach for the stars, we need to realize the affirmation comes only afterwards. It doesn’t come from the people who are looking on from the banks of the water. It comes from above, from the cloud enshrouded God. And we may be the only ones who hear God’s voice. We mustn’t let the cacophony of this world distract us from hearing the still, small voice of God. Sometimes we need to practice our own silence in order to hear the silence of the present moment speaking to us more clearly.