Tag: Relationships

Every now and then I indulge a curiosity about my family roots and try to find out more about my ancestors.
Out of 4 grandparents (2²), I never knew two of them at all; they died while I was still an infant. I barely remember a grandmother who died when I was four-years-old. I did know my mother’s father somewhat more. He died when I was thirteen.
Growing up, I never even heard the names of all my 8 great-grandparents (2³). Later, I found out that six of them were “from the other side” — i.e. immigrants.
All 16 of the fourth generation of my ancestors (2⁴) were from Europe, my mother’s people from Ireland and my father’s, from Baden, Hamburg, Hesse-Darmstadt and Prussia (all part of today’s Germany).
That’s as far back as I can go, and I don’t even know all the names of that generation of great-great-grandparents. Even so, as I sometimes reflect, if any one of these unknown ancestors had never existed — or never married as they did — I would never have come to be at all.
Most of them were born about a hundred years before me; in other words, in my family the gap between one generation and the next is approximately twenty-five years.
If that’s usually the case, and if I go back a thousand years or so, I must have had almost 40 generations of ancestors. That comes to 2⁴⁰ or 1,099,511,627,776 people.
Clearly that’s impossible. One thousand years ago there weren’t that many people in the whole world — but the math seems correct and I couldn’t be here if I didn’t have these antecedents.
Now, lets push the absurdity just a little bit further: Any one of the several billion people alive in the world today could claim a similar number of impossible ancestors.

The only conceivable way of explaining it is by interrelationships — over the centuries people must have married remote, unknown relatives.
It may not be rigorously scientific, but I think it’s fair to say that if you go back far enough — and 40 generations really isn’t so very far — we’re all distantly related.
That means every other person in the whole world somehow must be a cousin, even if that person is hundreds of generations removed.
Curiously the mathematics — plus a little probability theory — leads to a conclusion similar to that implied by the creation stories of the Book of Genesis: If we’re all descended from the first man and woman, we must all be distant cousins, no matter how many centuries apart.
So what? Well, we all know the bonds of family, the ties of blood and, for better or worse, the obligations that enmesh us in a web of relationships — whether clan, tribe, ethnic group, or nation. If we’re all related, then everybody’s part of that web. There are no outsiders, foreigners, strangers, or gentiles. We are all one human family.
There’s a beautiful attraction at Disney theme parks that illustrates this very well. You get in a boat and ride in a kind of world tour through a fantasy of little animated dolls, each one in the colorful dress of his or her country or culture. All play typical instruments, dance traditional dances, and sing, but, in spite of their diversity, they sing the same song, “It’s a small world after all.”
It is. We are all part of it — and we are all related.

(Published in
one, 31:5, September 2005)

Once upon a time, the elephant and the mouse were talking about being friends.
“Remember when our fathers were together with Noah and all the others. We were shipmates, living close one to the other in the ark. Why have we drifted so far apart over the centuries?”
“Well,” said the elephant, “to be perfectly frank, much of the time I’ve hardly given you any thought at all. You are rather small and easy to overlook.”
“Sometimes precious things come in small packages,” said the mouse. “I know you’re big, but bigness doesn’t mean better. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t mean to imply you’re any less. It’s just a matter of equal dignity for all us animals.”
Careful not to tread on the mouse, who, perhaps imprudently, was edging a little too close for comfort, the elephant retorted, “Sometimes you make me nervous, especially when you get near a sensitive place, like my nose. I know it must seem strange to you, but that’s the way I am!”
The mouse found it hard to believe that he could ever make the elephant nervous, but, the mouse thought, “Part of being friends is believing what your friend says.”
To reciprocate the mouse’s trust and good will, the elephant made a generous offer, “Why don’t you climb up and I’ll give you ride. The view from my back is vast and greater than from where you are on the ground.”
What a tempting offer it was, the mouse astride the elephant, but how incongruous too. “Maybe once or twice, just for a minute,” said the mouse gently, “but I have my proper place and perspective, and I must mind them.”

“Another part of being friends,” reflected the elephant, “is to spend more time together, perhaps even living in the same neighborhood.”
The mouse, who lived in a rather large old house, indicated that he was reasonably comfortable, even though traps were often set for him.
“You can hardly expect me to move into your burrows with you,” said the elephant.
“Nor vice-versa,” said the mouse, “for I fear I would be lost with you. Besides, I’d barely be noticed, while at home I’m known to the landlord and my friends.”
The elephant was becoming increasingly saddened by the turn the conversation was taking, and the mouse was too.
“Is there no way, then,” the elephant said, “for us to share more of our lives with each other.”
“Friendship is not a matter of physical proximity,” said the mouse. “In fact, for me that always remains rather dangerous. But there are other ways to be close. For example, the way we’re talking to one another right now.”
“Ah,” sighed the elephant, “how I wish that there weren’t such differences between us. But, don’t we have a lot in common too? Hopes, fears, sufferings, and sometimes even common enemies?”
“Indeed,” said the mouse in fond farewell, “and please God there will be other occasions for us to get together.”
How do an elephant and a mouse become close friends?
Carefully!

(Published as “On Friendship” in
Catholic Near East, 23:2, March 1997)