Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon\u00a0 (seed moon)<\/p>\n
The notion of legacy, Frank’s question from last Woolly meeting, has rolled over one more time in my thought.\u00a0 While resuming watching the Mahabarata, Time (the narrator of this long epic) comments on family as a garland.\u00a0 A family is like a garland, made of individual flowers, but joined by a common thread.\u00a0 The thread, he says, should be invisible, and the flowers’ scents and colors, though distinct, must not clash.<\/p>\n
It made me think of the thread in our family, rather than the individual flowers.\u00a0 In the West we spend so much time growing, cultivating, nourishing the flowers we often forget about, neglect the thread.\u00a0 In Chinese culture the family name comes first, then the given name.\u00a0 I mentioned a woman I called Ming Miao to a Chinese acquaintance who thought a moment, then said, “Oh, Miao Ming!”\u00a0 This difference is not subtle, it lies in the way we name ourselves.<\/p>\n
To complicate matters even more the thread has become a cord in our\u00a0 3rd millennial realm of shifting family ties, divorce, single parents and adoption.\u00a0 Perhaps the musical metaphor would serve better here, individual family members as notes and the link between them all a Wagnerian leitmotif.<\/p>\n
This section of the Mahabarata has made me wonder about spending time nourishing the thread, the cord, the leitmotif.\u00a0 I’m not sure I even know where to begin.\u00a0 Two ideas pushed themselves forward at once.\u00a0 The first, stimulated by Roy Wolf, the host of our sheepshead game, involves regular communication in writing with grandchildren.\u00a0 He writes each grandchild a letter once a week.<\/p>\n
The second came forward from another prod in the Mahabarata.\u00a0 The sage has a key role at this point in Indian history, especially in his role as teacher and as an advisor to kings and princes.\u00a0 In commenting on the purpose of the sage Dronacharya noted that learning alone has no purpose; learning must be shared.\u00a0 “The river,” he said, “cannot fit in one vessel.”<\/p>\n
One of the links in my family, from both the Ellis and Keaton side, is a long tradition of teachers.\u00a0 My grandmother Ellis was a teacher.\u00a0 My mother was a teacher.\u00a0 Many of my cousins on both sides are teachers as are my brother and sister.\u00a0 Jon and Jen are both teachers.\u00a0 The teaching occurs at all levels from elementary school through graduate school, but teachers have a major presence in all my family links including Jon and Jen.<\/p>\n
There is, too, the art of taking in knowledge and passing it on through different forms of vocational practice:\u00a0 medicine, military, clergy.\u00a0 That too is a mark of my family.\u00a0 These three are the oldest and in some person’s definitions, the only, professions.\u00a0 Professing and sustaining the traditions of medicine, warrior and person of faith also teach, but outside of the educational establishment.<\/p>\n
OK.\u00a0 Let’s say that teaching or transfer of knowledge is somehow the link, or at least a strong part of the link.\u00a0 Now what? Don’t know right now, but this seems important to\u00a0 me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon\u00a0 (seed moon) The notion of legacy, Frank’s question from last Woolly meeting, has rolled over one more time in my thought.\u00a0 While resuming watching the Mahabarata, Time (the narrator of this long epic) comments on family as a garland.\u00a0 A family is like a garland, made of individual flowers, but joined by … Continue reading Blest Be The Tie That Binds<\/span>