Generations coming and going...

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

At this point in time we're in the middle of a generation switch in my family. My grandparents are fainting away and slowly dying out at the same time my sisters are having their first kids.
It's all so very weird in many ways for me as a uncle and above average interested in theology and God.
To look into the eyes of newborns for the first time and at the same time (give or take) visit my grandpa at the nursery home and knowing that the this time may very well be the last time I look him into his eyes.
I might be a tad weird, but to me it feels as I'm facing God in a special way these days and in these encounters.
It reminds me of this scripture from the book of Job :

Job 1:21 And he said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

There's something really, really existential about birth and death. It's a place where we come touch with God the beginning and God as the end.


I just felt like sharing this experience in my life.

"Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

 

[Bob Crowley]

We're all in that boat. I grew up in a small street in Brisbane in the 1960s and 1970's, and all the neighbours knew each other. There were 21 children around my own age, give or take a few years. Of those 21, at least five have died that I know about (including my sister), and I suspect all the parents are gone.

I've lost touch with the others, so I don't know how many are still around. But at the same time new faces keep coming along.

I remember sitting in my school class room and the teacher remarking (in grade eight i think) that "by the law of averages one of you will be dead by the age of 18" and my attention was drawn to another kid whom I also knew from playing field hockey.

He died in a car accident around the age of eighteen.

To quote Bob Dylan, "For the wheel’s still in spin, And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’". Give it another 30 years, and probably none of the childhood friends will still be here. We'll all have faced God, and our eternal neighbourhood will have been determined.

 

[eastcoast_bsc]

We're all in that boat. I grew up in a small street in Brisbane in the 1960s and 1970's, and all the neighbours knew each other. There were 21 children around my own age, give or take a few years. Of those 21, at least five have died that I know about (including my sister), and I suspect all the parents are gone.

I've lost touch with the others, so I don't know how many are still around. But at the same time new faces keep coming along.

I remember sitting in my school class room and the teacher remarking (in grade eight i think) that "by the law of averages one of you will be dead by the age of 18" and my attention was drawn to another kid whom I also knew from playing field hockey.

He died in a car accident around the age of eighteen.

To quote Bob Dylan, "For the wheel’s still in spin, And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’". Give it another 30 years, and probably none of the childhood friends will still be here. We'll all have faced God, and our eternal neighbourhood will have been determined.

I lost two of my brothers, Mother and Father. I have become introspective about life these past years. Life is a cycle of birth and death, death and renewal. We are all making our journey back to nature .
After my Mother died I thought about the lyrics to the band "Live" song "lighting crashes.

Lightning crashes a new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes
The confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door
Lightning crashes an old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes
The confusion that was hers
Belongs now to the baby down the hall
Oh now feel it, comin' back again
Like a rollin', thunder chasing the wind
Forces pullin' from
The center of the earth again
I can feel it.

The song is about the cycle of life.

Life is a journey, another song has always reminded of the journey . I listed to this song when I was young , now I realize the lyrics and what before the deluge mean.

Before the Deluge
Jackson Browne





Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature
While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
With their hearts they turned to each other's hearts for refuge
In the troubled years that came before the deluge
Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept before the deluge
Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky
Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge
Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

 

[pdudgeon]

Stabat, what you are experiencing comes to all of us. As one generation passes, it puts the rest of us one more notch up in the line of life.

We all experience new things with each step forward that we take in our family. From the youngest to the oldest, each person has 4 things to do:
1. a special place to fill,
2. a job to do,
3. wisdom to impart to the younger generation, and
4. a legacy to leave.

What I've found as I moved up that line of life is that each time I moved, I experienced more and more of what it meant to receive the full force of life's expectations head on.

And with each move I came to rely upon God more and more in order to be able to fulfill those expectations. I quickly found out that as much as I enjoyed being at the head, that experiencing the full force of life's gales could easily topple me right over if I did not already have a good solid ground upon which to stand, and a life jacket handy as well.