Meditations on family life

My birthday falls at the end of October, a season of great silliness in our culture. The TV industry tries to entertain us with its worst horror films. Candy merchants place great hopes on selling sugar to a populace of growing obesity. And people pretending to be conservatives are spending hundreds of millions on ads to warn us against excessive spending.

It is important to step back from the fake fears of Halloween and reclaim a wider perspective. We might not be so easily manipulated by alarmists if we were more determined to make a sober reckoning of our actual situation. The deeper tradition tries to tell us that one good way of doing this is by paying attention to the wisdom and legacy of those who traveled these paths before us.

All Saints Day, coming after the “hallowed evening,” invites us into reflection and remembrance. We remember how our fathers and mothers in faith dealt with challenges and adversity. We draw strength from their skills in adapting and surviving, their courage in facing the new and unknown. Hardship made them tough; stories today make them real to us again.

From the years our family spent in Croatia, I treasure the ways we came to understand ourselves and our own culture through the contrasts we experienced there. If we were in Zagreb again this season, we would be joining thousands of the city’s residents in flocking by bus or tram to the stately Mirogoj Cemetery on the upper slopes of the town, rolling toward nearby Mount Sljeme. Families stream into the cemetery carrying flowers and candles to mark the resting place of their own relatives but also the national poets and cultural heroes whose work is celebrated afresh each season. Young parents tell their children the tales of their heritage; heroes and goats of yesteryear can be revisited to encourage or warn the living to take heed, consider their ways and seek wisdom.

We loved to join the folks making this annual pilgrimage of sorts. The street vendors peddling hot roasted chestnuts along the way added an alluring attraction. We walked with friends among the monuments, learning chapters of the culture’s history in vivid glimpses through the smoky dusk. What makes a people who they are? Where does their resilience come from? How do they handle tough times? Stories give answers and suggest trajectories for dealing with future crises.

But stories need time, they need occasions, they ask us to pay deliberate attention. A poet should not be packaged between commercial breaks. The songs of martyrs do not fit with the froth of soap and sandwich ads. We need to hold hands with the long, unbroken chain of faithful witnesses from previous generations as we hunker down for another long winter.

As our family gathers for upcoming holiday times together, I look forward to holding our new grandson and gathering with our children to tell a few stories of times of testing in the past, of challenges met and accomplishments to celebrate. I hope we also tell tales of loss and failure, since we often have more to learn from them than what may seem simple in the wake of success.

As I learn what it means to become a new grandparent, I am drawn to review the stories from my own grandparents. I realize that if anything worthwhile is to convey from that span of generations into the new ones, I need to carry some freight over the bridge. This little boy I hold in my arms has roots and connections that span four continents already; the family stories I want him to know cover three centuries thus far, and he may well carry them into a fourth. Our faith stories cover four millennia. We definitely have some things we need to talk about.

A few years ago I had the privilege of turning 50 in Jerusalem. We walked the walls that day; I posed with a 50-year-old cactus. Some friends on hand, lots of e-mails and cards from afar, and a fun song adapted by our daughter and her friend marked the occasion. That semester season of sabbath reflection stays with me, impacting the way I read my Bible and the way I envision the stories of our faith. There were tough stories at hand, from the past and the present, challenging and disturbing our concepts of shalom and security and ecumenics and interfaith encounters.

When our stories properly place a contested faith heritage at the center of who we are and hope to be, we will have some protection from the fake fears and manufactured silliness that passes for popular culture in this season. We will counter silliness with the sparkling joy of the saints of God.

Gerald Shenk is an adjunct professor at Goshen (Ind.) College.