The Spirituality of Genealogy
(Originally published on Jan 26, 2023, under the “Faith Matters” series in the Flamborough Review community newspaper.)
During the shutdowns of the pandemic, people were looking for hobbies they could do from home. Along with hiking and bicycling, genealogy surged in popularity. While stuck at home, it was easy to purchase a subscription to Ancestry.com and spend hours searching for family roots.
I’ve been a genealogist for almost 30 years. Like others, I used much of my pandemic home time to continue my research online and develop my genealogy websites.
I also began pondering the healing aspects of genealogy. Healing? Yes, healing.
Why are so many people so obsessed with learning their family roots? It deepens our sense of identity. In a world where people feel more and more disconnected, it gives us an extended family to feel connected to.
As my indigenous neighbours have taught me, I am the product of “all my relations.”
As much of our adult personalities are formed in childhood before the age of 8, then our parents or childhood caregivers have a huge impact on who we become as adults. If much of our sense of identity and personality foundations are shaped by our parents, then our parents were equally shaped by their parents, and so on. For good and bad.
In understanding more about the childhoods of our parents, we may come to see our parents through more forgiving eyes as we begin to better understand why our parents thought and behaved the way they did. We see that they were the product of their own upbringings. The same is true for each generation we go back. The more we understand “all our relations” the more we understand ourselves and can sometimes begin to heal multi-generational wounds.
We also learn to see ourselves as the hybrid of multiple cultures coming together in one extended family. Just the way the world should be: multiple cultures living in harmony.
Many of my queer friends who have been tragically rejected by their birth families (often for misguided religious reasons) speak of their “chosen family.” In cases where relationships are broken, we still crave family-like connections. And that’s what the church was originally intended to be like – a place where broken souls could experience “chosen family.” The metaphor of family runs throughout our ancient religious texts because we all crave deep, safe, loving connections where we feel like we belong.
This summer I will be taking a sabbatical exploring deeper into the topic of the spirituality of genealogy. As part of that sabbatical, I will be travelling to the land of my ancestors, Scotland, in order to immerse myself in my own historical roots while I read, reflect and write about the relationship between spirituality, genealogy, family, trauma and healing, personal and cultural identity. I intend to blog and vlog regularly during my sabbatical. You are invited follow along.
