by Joan Mitchell, CSJ
When I find myself weeding in the garden in my good clothes after I get home from Sunday Mass, I remember Grandma Mitchell used to get after my grandpa for doing the same thing. “You’ll get your clean pants dirty,” she objected. It makes me wonder if wearing one’s best to garden after Mass may be genetic. I like to add a little adoration of growing things to a prayerful morning. Perhaps he did, too.
What runs in families are not only genes but also values lived and practiced over generations. This summer I made a trip to Pictou, Nova Scotia, that made me realize how far back education goes as a value in our family DNA.
Grandma Mitchell was a MacFarlane with a leather-bound book of Bobby Burns poetry on the high shelf of her closet. She taught school for 16 years before marrying the Sunday gardener.
An enterprising relative has posted some 1,200 people on the MacFarlane family tree, including Thomas McCulloch, a Presbyterian minster and doctor who started Pictou Academy in his house shortly after arriving from Scotland in 1804. He worked stubbornly for liberal, nonsectarian university education available to all, and in doing so, influenced the quality of education in Nova Scotia and in all Canada. Grandma was similarly relentless in encouraging me to excel at study.
Two family trees figure in Sunday’s readings: the children of Abraham and the house of David. Abraham and Sarah hear God’s call, go to a new land, and await a child who will be the first of descendants as countless as the stars of the sky or sands of the seashore. Faith is their DNA.
The descendants of Jesse become the kings of Israel. God promises Jesse’s son David, “Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever” (2 Samuel 7.14). Faith and repentance are in David’s DNA.
- What’s in your DNA?