Renewal

Today is Easter Sunday and Spring is everywhere evident in Missouri.  In pondering the idea of Resurrection, the concept of coming back to life after death, I realize that for my own family, I have brought our original grandparents “back to our lives” though all of them have died and we will never be able to know them one-on-one.

These days, families are often geographically distant from one another and may not know each other well.  I have to content myself that what I do know may be almost as much as many other people may know (without the complications of adoption within their own families).

For myself, it has to be enough to know that I have allowed these dead relatives to speak to my heart about their sorrows and sacrifices, that make the life that I live possible.  It is a kind of reward and vindication – not of what they lost or what was done to them – but for their choosing life.  It is true, that other options didn’t really exist at the time my parents were born or when I was actually conceived out of wedlock myself.

While holding precious every life that exists in my own family, I am also grateful that women have had the right to make safe decisions about their own lives and I sorrow that those rights are being eroded.  The planet actually has more people than it can sustain.  Part of life’s ongoing nature is that some die and some are born.  A renewal of life is ongoing.  All we have to do is look honestly around us without politically advantageous sentimentality.