Family Tree: Identity

Looking in the Mirror and Seeing Beyond the Surface Image

Isn’t this a beautiful pine tree? For more than three decades I’ve had the pleasure of watching it grow from a one-foot transplant to a towering monument that overlooks my house. Planted before my children were born, it still thrives after they moved on to their own place. In a way, it’s my family tree. It survived deep freeze winters, pounding hailstorms, mid summer drought spells and my limited horticultural skills to become a majestic attraction to my yard thanks to its extensive root system.

  If only I could cast a long shadow like this tree. That shouldn’t be impossible. When I look at the life stories of my parents and grandparents, I see I have the roots. Their rural roots discovered nutrients in the depths of the depression; molded values, shaped behaviors and expectations and produced a bountiful harvest. The fruits of their lived-values nourish me today.

One mineral tapped by those roots included the attitude of wasting nothing. A bent nail is straightened and used again. Bolts, washers, and rusty screws from machinery beyond repair furnish a home warehouse large enough to rival the town hardware store. A broken shovel handle –– repair it. It’s shorter but useable. Cash in discarded beer bottles and pop bottles. Leftovers from last night’s supper are tomorrow’s lunch.

Another valued mineral was work. Physical exertion hardened muscles and opened opportunities. Next day’s work burns a feast’s calories. “Make hay while the sun shines––a minimum expectation to live by.” Crops to be planted or harvested means start before sunrise and finish after sunset unless challenged by the weather. Time out for a party or a sports activity could cost a crop, a year’s investment. Recreation takes place when work is done. Questioning this priority means a blind eye to a bulging bank account and top-of-the-line purchases.

Another mineral sought by family roots was finding time for others based on the assumption that people are naturally good. Simply listening to others’ stories cultivated dozens of eyes watching vacationers’ homes and children playing in each other’s yards. Service angels came to mow lawns or shovel sidewalks for seniors and the disabled. Handymen tackled odd jobs: cooks whipped up meals for the sick. The stimulating fertilize––first one, then another and another complimentary service. On faith Dad knew strangers become neighbors.

A family tree is more than names, birth and death dates. It’s lessons and values learned from hearing or seeing family members' life-stories. Their successes shaped identity. 

Without insight into our family history, it is harder to appreciate who we are. In what way has your identity grown from you family’s lifestyle?

The latter question is one that Jill in Baggage burdens. would have a difficult time answering. Her limited knowledge of her family tree stories left her with only vague impression of who she was. How that affected her will be the subject of the next blog.

Grounds for Sowing

Grounds for Sowing

In the parable of the sower (Matt. 13: 3-8), Jesus describes the seed as falling in various places. Growth and fruit depends upon where the seed lands.

In Baggage burdens. it depends upon when the seeds of love fall in her life. It is sowed many times in her life, but because of her fears she is not ready to nourish the seed and see the potential harvest. Those seeds experience limited development as if they fall by the wayside (dirt path), stony places, shallow soil, or amongst thorns.

It is important to note that the seeds that are sowed, the acts of love for Jill, are good. For a single sower such results can be discouraging. The value of living in God’s community is that repeated seedings come because of the many sowers acting in a loving ways. Sooner of later the Spirit’s love-prompted acts will land in good soil, land in a time when a person is ready to accept that they need His help.

The problem for Josey, Jill’s grandmother, and Joseph, Jill’s husband, is the wait is decades long. Hope is stretched onion-paper thin. The problem for readers of the Baggage burdens. is they learn of the goals of Josey and Joseph only to see them dashed. An understandable reaction is how can Jill be so insensitive.

Experiencing Jill’s life may help. The seeds of her mother’s love fall in soil littered with boulders of her father’s drunken violent outbursts. The seed of Dave’s love––Dave is Jill’s school friend who rescues Jill after she runs away from her parent––is swallowed up by immaturity and a touch of lust. Josey’s initial act of love and Mary and Ed’s becoming substitute parents is the shallow soil. Their acts of love produced growth, but other interests, Jill’s over whelming fears, steal the nutrients that could have produced fruit. Joseph’s committed romantic love for Jill fails. Because of the setting of his love, an inflexible, conservative, rural church upbringing and community, the expected bountiful harvest is choked.

Have you ever tried to help someone only to see him or her fall back into his or her former life style? Perhaps they have returned to drinking or smoking or overspending.

How many times have you extended a helping hand before you began considering giving up?

Work Is Play

When Work Is Play

Being paid to have fun: what a concept for work! To catch the quality of play I invite you to drift back to the time when you were a child. Pick any activity you loved to do, building sand castles, biking, playing street hockey, or playing the piano. Do you remember I can’t wait to finish lunch so I can go out and play or do I have to come in for supper or to go to bed already? Engaging in the passion knows no time or energy limitations. Such is the quality of play.

For Joseph Kreshky and Thomas Croschuk in Baggage burdens. gardening and marketing their produce presents such a life style. The time and energy they devote to their work is pleasing and inspiring, particularly for Joseph. Carpentry for Joseph is also source of joy. Monetary rewards prove to be a secondary benefit to their involvement in their passion.

Amber too, has a passion born from play––art work frequently expressed in painting. She chooses what and when to paint without any direction from anyone else. She commits all her finances and time to pursuing studies at university to broaden and refine her skills to be an accomplished artist.

Bill incorporates his passion into his work and later into his retired life. Because the latter activity is volunteer work, monetary rewards are of little significance. His involvement is all that matters.

For each of these characters they all have a talent and a passion for their particular activity, but they have one more important energizing element that makes their work worthwhile. See how the people they connect with feed their passion.  

Jill too has a passion for staging plays. From time to time it pokes its head above the soil. Unfortunately the roots of her passion are grounded in shallow soil, as is much of her life.

What is your passion? What retards its growth and development?

If your passion happens to be that of creative person, an artist, actor, writer, recognition of your efforts may take decades. That may be true for one who loves to help people too. How that may be the case is explored in next week’s blog, Grounds for Sowing.

P L A Y !

 P L ^A   _Y      

Let’s play. Let’s have fun.

That’s the invitation I issue at the beginning of a new creative writing class or new writer’s circle. Let’s play, play with words, play with ideas, play with expressions. Let’s explore, where there is no right or wrong. All is acceptable. Take time to learn what works, what works even better.

Take time, and throw it out the window. In the midst of play, time and energy are limitless. Be a carefree child.

When is the last time you have felt like that? My best guess is when you were on a holiday. For Jill in Baggage burdens. her best time of play is their Hawaiian holiday, her delayed honeymoon.

While sitting on a private beach in Hawaii, she wakes her husband by dropping little pebbles on his leg, his chest, off the side of his face. They race off Joseph’s body like insects until he snatches them and sees Jill laughing. One night in Hawaii Jill dresses up for supper and then bewitches her husband to fulfill her sexual fantasies. Another night she adopts the role of a siren to lure Joseph, an exciting make believer stranger, to her condo suite.

The Hawaii environment offers Joseph times of play. After Jill’s pebble awakening, Joseph becomes Don Jaun. He scoops Jill into his arms and races down the beach, creating the impression she’s about to be dropped into the cold ocean water. Another time, spurred by an early morning rooster crow, he slips out of their gated resort. He boldly explores an impoverished community, before he finds baron like properties and the roosters’ homes.

Play enables one to escape from stressful situations. One night while driving home from Edmonton in a blinding snowstorm, Joseph recalls that his parents died in a similar situation. Stressed, he pulls up to a motel. To rescue Joseph from his disturbing past, Jill invites her husband to participate in an adapted version of a play her drama club considered. The play is about a lonely husband who slips out of a party with an attractive woman. They go to a motel. Jill instructs Joseph to register them as Mr. And Mrs. Smith as happened in the play.

When has play rescued you from the real world?

Imagine what life would be like when work is play. Next week’s blog, explores work as play by examining Joseph and Thomas gardening and marketing life style and Amber’s passion for painting.

Effects of Family

Effects of Family Life 

The single greatest traumatic event in Joseph’s life was losing his parent’s at the age of five. (Joseph was an only child.) Later he learned from his grandparents, who adopted him that his parents died in a car accident while driving home during a winter storm. Ambition caused their death the grandparents agreed. While his grandparents showed little interest in Joseph’s dreams, they were kind and they cared for him. While still very young, Joseph enjoyed listening to his grandparents’ success stories of farming and struggling to put food on the table. From them he learned that one could be content with a farming life.  

Joseph had five uncles. Four of them lived a wild, drinking life style and earned his devout Christian grandparent’s disapproval. Alcohol rarely touched Joseph’s lips. The fifth and oldest uncle, Mike, who’d moved out on his own, closely followed his parent’s example. Alone he successfully farmed and participated in the local conservative church. In Mike Joseph found a like-minded companion.

Up until the time Joseph sees Jill in Baggage burdens. he has given up finding a wife. The close-knit church shielded their daughters from him. Loneliness intensified after Uncle Mike died. Jill’s interest in him gave rebirth to having a lifetime companion and a large family. Being an only child convinced him not to subject another child to that torment.

Daniel’s interest in carpentry began with hearing members of the church praise his father for the projects he built. Honing his skills Daniel soon received recognition for his efforts. Like his father Daniel soon developed an appreciation for the approval of the people at his church.

The creative gene thrives in Jill and Amber, her eldest daughter. Frank’s destruction of Jill’s drama project nipped her creative spirit before it could develop. Later Jill joined the Creative Arts Society of Brampton at the Brick Theatre. Her love of drama died after she heard that her grandmother was bringing Dave, a want-to-be boyfriend, to see her. When Jill moves back into Camrose, she resurrects her drama activity. Amber’s creative spirit appears early when she makes invitation cards for her father’s birthday party. Under Jill’s encouragement Amber develops a love for painting and makes it a major focus when she goes to university.