My Grandpa Schaap was a preacher, who throughout his life held forth at a number of churches, including a small town in eastern Wisconsin where I happened to be born. He had a sweet and loving disposition, I'm told, as did all of my grandparents, for better or for worse. His faith was deep and profound. If I've ever wandered in my life, it's not been all that far. I never wanted to be a pastor like him, but, strangely enough, I've written more meditations than I can count. I am my grandpa's child.
His wife was the daughter of distinguished professor known for his absent-mindedness, as well as his opposition to the ruling ideology within his Dutch Reformed world, that of Abraham Kuyper. I'm told my great-grandpa believed Kuyper's dalliance with common grace swept believers far too close to worldliness. I own books from his library, most of which are Dutch. His daughter, my Grandma Schaap, is remembered by all who knew or met her, as a lovely human being, beautiful especially in a spiritual sense. She died before I ever knew her, during World War II, when five stars stood in the front window of the manse. People remember her as warm and loving.
My mother's father, my Grandpa Dirkse, carried a particular version of Dutch Calvinism that's not only concerned but occasionally stymied by a brooding sense of sin. On his own--he didn't need a sermon when the one in his heart was as demanding as it was--he took what seemed a perverse pleasure in the darkness of his soul. Oddly enough, crying about his sin--not individual sins, but sin itself--offered emotional relief, as if life should be lived in almost constant confession. Although that kind of spirituality, deep and dark, once affected many Dutch-Americans of his era, it's pretty much gone now. He managed, I believe, to give something of that disposition to my mother. When I say that's not all bad, I'm sure it's his part of me that's speaking.
Grandma Dirkse needed to be a comic to put up with bouts of seriousness, and she was. Her roots were in a more progressive, less strict Dutch Calvinism, a bit more worldly. She told my father, years ago, not to be so harsh when his daughters wanted to go to school dances, dances his preacher-father would have every soul in church shun. Grandma Dirkse was a card, but she'd come by it honestly, her only sibling killed in France in World War I, her father an abusive, heavy drinker. Strangely enough, the darkness in her life made her joy more radiant.
All of this I know, although some of it may be a slant that is mine alone. My sisters might well beg to disagree. I am my parents' child too, of course. My father was a community leader, village president for a time, on boards and committees for all of his life. My mother mostly stayed home, taught a host of kids to play the piano she absolutely loved, and taught them well. She was a terrific classroom teacher too. I know because I had her.
Romey's Place is a novel I wrote about the legacy of righteousness and, occasionally, how difficult it can be to live with righteousness. Sometimes perfect, as they say, is the enemy of good.
Yesterday, when I opened the Christmas present my adult children gave me, I couldn't help but giggle. AncestryDNA, the box within the paper said. I giggled because thirty seconds later, I gave my wife the very same gift. Soon enough we'll both be off on the kind of adventure tons of folks are taking today, a scientific look at who and where we come from.
If I thought DNA tests were silly, I wouldn't have bought in for Barbara. It'll be fun for both of us to learn what we can about our own human genome.
Will I learn any more than I think I already know? Honestly, I doubt it. But I'll take a shot at it, stay open-minded.
Yesterday, surrounded by family--although three were missing 500 miles away--we celebrated Christmas, or tried, with kids and grandkids, who only faintly remember their great-grandparents and have no knowledge whatsoever of an earlier generation on either side. What they'll know--if they want to--is what they'll learn if they try to find out.
Who are we? Why are we? Who made us what we are? Identity is important.
This morning after Christmas, I'm thankful for yesterday's doings, for a good meal together, for ancestry.com, and all the gifts, and especially the reason for the season--a child, the King of creation, born into human flesh in a manger of all things.
And I'm thankful, too, for who I am and all those ancestors--Dutch Calvinists one and all--who left me something of themselves, a goodly heritage, as the Bible says.
(I sound so much like my grandparents!)
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