Finally, Digging in to History

In my most recent post, over a month ago, I touched on the legacy of history in our lives. On a personal history level, all lines of my family tree eventually lead back to Ireland. And still, I was surprised at how moving it was to finally visit Ireland. Not moving in that I found distant relatives and exact spots where my relatives had lived. Maybe it sounds silly, but it felt that the world I existed in had suddenly grown larger. In the United States I was sometimes aware of the many random experiences that had had to happen so that my parents could meet and give birth to me. In Ireland, I sensed that thousands more random events had happened there to create the circumstances that led to my conception and birth.

During high school and college, history often just seemed like a list of events that I needed to memorize. It was later that I began to find that history was full of doors to the present. A few weeks ago I read an article by John Krull where he reflects on some of our country's sins--“slavery, segregation, the extermination of native Americans, the internment of Japanese-Americans, too many other transgressions to list – about which we should feel shame, not pride.” It's a tricky equation. Why should we feel shame about slavery when we had nothing to do with it? On the other hand, why should we feel pride about the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence when we had nothing to to with that either?

Studying my personal history has an emotional and spiritual element to it. On a national level, I think there comes responsibility. How can we live up to the good and noble? How can we repair the harm created by injustice and cruelty? What difficult questions.

(slightly relevant cartoon: http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/store/add.php?iid=136860)