Deracination Revisited

I visited Philbrook again today and was once again moved by all those scenes ... there's a special exhibit from Florence's Uffizi right now and it's full of pastorals and landscapes ... and then the French gallery includes Corot and Duby and others that show once again how things can be ... and were ... Different ... in other times, other places.

How Different? Well for one thing ... Rooted.

Rooted in Family, in Culture, in Place, in Church, in Community ...

I think that's one of the enormous differences between my mother's generation and those of other places & other climes. My mother's generation continued and brought to a new level an American and modern trend toward Deracination ...

and I am the product. Deracinated. Disconnected. Lonely. Alone.

Could it be that it was my sister's, and my, hunger for Roots in the face of the Rootlessness of our family, that led us to swim the Tiber and seek in the Church of Rome a Family with Roots ... ?

If so ... well ... all I can do is say *thank* you Lord Jesus ... and *thank* you O Ecclesia Patri, Ecclesia Petrii, Ecclesia Madre.

Maybe this is why I'm so hungry for the opportunity to have my own home ... meaning in my case a little house with a little yard ... your house, Momma, and mine; your yard, Momma, and mine.

Oh this is almost nothing compared to the Communitas of Tuscany and even Nice and Cannes and Elsinore ... what an exquisite painting of Castle Kronengberg ...

I guess centuries ago I might have been istting on a small piece of land that was part of a family, or extended family, complex arrangement of ownership and property and community. Instead of this little house in Tulsa, across town from a small remnant of our family. Yet that's something. Something for this deracinated son of our very deracinated family.

I guess centuries ago there would have been a family cemetery in which I would visit your grave Momma ... instead of my visiting it in a civic cemetery full of unrelated persons ... yet I have a place beside you Momma and our dual grave is only a few feet from that of our cousins ... even amid the many others we don't know ... that's somthing. Something for this deracinated son of a deracinated family.

To be American in this early 21st Century is to be in so many ways Deracinated. So different from a Medalgo family of Florence in the 15th Century. So different from a family living in the Palatine of the 16th Century in Roma.

Yet what can I do but seek to honor your passing, Momma, and honor our famly background, all gift of God, in so far as I can in very small way try to approximate and celebrate the rootedness that was our family long, long ago.

I love you Momma

I love you all my ancestors in Christ

I love you and thank you all.

Charles Delacroix
Eve of 6th Sunday in Eastertide