Each side of the family is different. One has been here much longer than the other, though both came here from Germany if I’m not mistaken.
I think one side has been here for four generations (came here in the late-1800’s) and the other for several generations (came here in the mid-1700’s).
FindAGrave.com is a great resource for finding where your ancestors are buried & you can make a virtual cemetery. I volunteer there and manage several of my Family’s online profiles.
I plan to take my daughters on a road-trip to visit these sacred gravesites in person.
On one side, the first arrived in 1894 if I recall correctly and settled directly in the Midwest, far north of the Mason Dixon line. As such, they arrived decades after the abolition of slavery and had zero involvement with it.
On the other side, even though I would not be classified as “African American”, one of my ancestors was apparently an actual African American Slave in Louisiana.
I don’t know how people who support “Reparations” would justify obligating ancestors of people who came here as immigrants long after slavery was outlawed to pay reparations or if they’d support reparations given to someone like me who would be classified as “Caucasian”, which would seem to go against the ideas of the proponents of “Reparations”…
A family member traced our Dunham family to the 1600s in America. I don’t know how many generations.
My good friend Rosalie says, “I’m not African American. I’ve never been to Africa.” She was born in Texas. Sometime I call her “Tex,” or to tease her I will say she’s a Texan American. (Texas was briefly a separate country, but that was somewhat before our time.)
As Americans, we have been here since the time our ancestors came from Europe and drove the native American people off the lands where they had lived for thouands of years.
Another thought is that Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead.”
He also says in the Bible that he didn’t come to create a great feeling of family membership; rather he came to break the family apart, and extricate the one family member who is ready to follow him.
If family life is bringing us closer to God, it is good. That is the real family. There is only one family…because God is the Father of everyone on earth. As we progressivley cultivate our love for God, the symptom will be that we see everyone as a family member. This is not the flesh and blood family; it is the family of the spirit, which is the real family. Visiting graveyards, however can be very educational. It can remind us that these material families of the flesh, simply don’t endure, and that we should cultivate our eternal family relationship. We are all “prodigal sons” of the Lord.
“…and extricate the one family member who is ready to follow him.”
This is a to-the-point interpretation. Hopefully, the others follow later. But yes, to argue over Christianity. As Christ also said, it’s not those who are hot or cold but the lukewarm whom he spits out. Arguing doesn’t reflect the lukewarm.
“If family life is bringing us closer to God, it is good. That is the real family.”
“This is not the flesh and blood family; it is the family of the spirit, which is the real family.”
For my part, it turned out to be my own mother who is also the family of the Spirit. But I agree with this. And ‘Brother’ and ‘Sister’ are terms to denote one’s spiritual / wider family and not those of a blood-family where there is a disconnect.
My family are all nuts, in terms of ancestry…I’ve got English London. Irish with the name directly from the toughest county in Ireland. I have Scottish blood, of a clan. And Persian (I think) - somewhere around there. A blogger from the US once said she thought she was related to me, while I don’t see how. I haven’t spent that much effort in tracing far back, though it would be fun to know. I would hazard a guess and say if anyone from another country were related to me, they would be from a place where even grey squirrels fear to tread.
I have to say, though, none of this bears any significance to anything much because as another member on here stated in their post, it is our spiritual ancestry which is the most applicable. And I would add that one’s faith, religion and spirituality transcends borders. When we become Catholic, we become ‘universal’ and which is what ‘Catholic’ means. For all people, at God’s service.
Never been, and actually, I have no disire to go to the US. I’m from Brazil, happy here, and the inly other place I would live, would probably be Germany.
But abbout imigration, my mom was born in argentina and came to Brazil as a child, when my grandfather received a job opportunity. I know my last name carries some old kinda “important” (not anymore, but may have one day been) history from Spain.
One perspective given by other scriptures, and I think given by the Bible as well, is that we are spirit soul. People often say, “my soul”. But the concept given to us by scripture is not that we have a soul, but that we are a soul, a spirit soul, an eternal spirit soul, that is presently residing within a material body.
The idea that the spirit soul can exist without being within a material form, is in the New Testament. I believe that I read that Jesus cast out bad spirits that had taken possession of some people, and injected these evil spirits into the bodies of pigs and then made the pigs run over a cliff. In other words, some of us have material bodies. Some of us only have subtle material forms, and are called ghosts. The idea is that there are spirit souls, in these gross material forms, and in the subtle material forms of ghosts. But, "I am an eternal spirit soul. I am not this material body which a temporary manifestation… that only appears to be alive…as long as the real person, the spirit, is inside it. As soon as the real person, the spirit departs…no one wants to hug and kiss a dead body. I think this what the phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” means. Our bodies are composed of material elements, and when we leave them, our bodies return to the material elements. But we are eternal. Eternal spirit souls.
Now, consider this. The boy is born in America, one thinks, “I am American”. And one who is born in China thinks, “I am a China-man.” And if one is born in Russia, one thinks, “I am Russian.” But if I am not this material body…I am not American, or Chinese, or Russian. I am a spirit soul. All of this nationalism, is based on the soul’s identification with the material body. This is being in the service of “mammon”. To be proud of the land of one’s birth. To be willing to die for one’s country. It is all the service of mammon. These geographic lines are not made by God. They are made by men.
The truth is… every soul is a child of God. And therefore we are all one family. This is surely what Jesus is teaching. We just have to be a little thoughtful and consider these things.
I take your point. Yes, Nationalism and being nationalistic is always proudful and so a spiritual irregularity.
While we have eternal souls in a material body (attributed new ones in Heaven), we are still on Earth and have to be for the service of others (‘In the world, but not of the world’) and therefore meaning one’s head should be bowed to government / heads of state…in submission of service to God for ‘the people’ (except in conditions of all-out extremist politics, i.e. dictatorship in some form). As such, I would make the distinction that love for one’s country can become proudful and eventually the worshiping of an idol. Where Mammon is a drive for material wealth and so as a subject in requirement of more sub-category criteria. It’s all about priorities, of an interior disposition. And ‘Nationalism’, definitely idol worship on some level…
I tend to think the US, though, has always been trying to build its own utopia and which is in-part why I think favourably of it (my issues with the US, post-arrest execution and hate-organisations of extreme manifested output such as the KKK being permitted under Free Speech rather than rightly outlined as forms of terrorism).
Hi Morgan! My gut reaction to what you are writing…is that this conversation is touching upon very complex issues which can’t be sorted out in a paragraph or two. My personal disposition is to be separate from the world to a great extent. I have lived in the forest (Gila National forest) since the year 2000. It is so remote from cosmopolitan American culture, that we haven’t thought of locking a door out here for the last 25 years. And we sleep on the porch year round. I do not identify myself as belonging to any nation. All of these divisions of countries seem to be businesses that present themselves as nations. The people in the state are like peasants. And the financial giants are the lords and barons. The lords and barons are the backstage managers of the government. In this way the government facilitates the financial aspirations of the wealthy 1%. And the role of “the people” is simply to pay taxes…which the governments use for fighting with other nations. In this way, exploitation goes on in the guise of “government for the people by the people”. Not a very nice situation. But this is why God sends His servants to guide us. And if they are considered as trouble makers, they are usually done away with by the powers that be. My feeling is that our only hope is to prepare ourselves for being qualified to live in communion with God.
Indeed, a thread in itself. To keep it short, what you term as exploitation is what I deem as the running of the country. That is what it takes. With your visual projection concerning lords and barons, etc…a dystopian scene from what would be more along the lines of a socialist political uprising having taken hold - a bourgeoisie; all the same, when we think of the public secular structure of medieval times and centuries surrounding, it makes for a very interesting transposition.