I will come back to Part 2 that started a Step Forward last week. March 17 brought two questions to mind: Who’re your people? and Where’re you from? Those questions can find a shirt tale relative or an identification of place as important to you. They unveil my ethnic day. Since my auburn childhood curls have become white slight waves, the connection is not as evident, but my people are Kellys and Mileys and in the late 1700’s they had just come over from Ireland to find dockhand jobs in Pennsylvania, implanting in me a yearning for all their cultural characteristics.
An aunt hand wrote an ancestor list that got lost in my moves. I remember it had names of marriages and places of residence. For 200 years the Kellys and other Irishmen worked their way down the east coast of the United States providing cheap labor as needed. Jacks of all trades and masters of none, they were at times demeaned as drunkards and brawlers and con_men. The name paddy wagon came from the week-end trip of the police to pick up “paddies,” immigrants of their day from the peat bogs of Ireland. My branch ended up in Florida with a granddad still working for the railroad that some previous relative helped build. Through generations, a woman’s name of Margaret kept reappearing. It was paired at times with Maria. A cousin’s name is blended to Margaria. I envy the sound.
Behind the pejorative comments that come to almost any cultural group are those characteristics I cherish. An accent that flows like honey over warm bread with sentences that begin with, “Sure, and.” Dances like jigs and reels that call you in when music is played by fiddles, flutes, and the strums of a harp. Songs from a Irish tenor: My Wild Irish Rose and Galway Bay. Even Danny Boy finds an appropriate place at funerals. Folk tales and mystical beliefs run from a scary Banshee to skin changing selkies and the leprechauns who may lead one to a pot of gold. I especially like the thought of “thin places” where you can almost easily move into a spiritual realm. St. Patrick, one of the few saints I think I know, is admired if he did nothing but drive snakes from Ireland, making it a perfect place for me. I wore something green yesterday. However, joined with you and whatever heritage you love, there is a kingdom for all, creating within us the same intense longing to belong.
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. And your dominion endures throughout all generations.
Psalm 145:13
Let Me Tell Ya 