Often we are asked to assist in genealogy enquiries and it is work we grow skilled in.
Often it emerges that folk who live in other lands and are seeking their in other lands do not realise the way things were here in times past, and thus they seek what can no longer be found.
This recent photograph of one of Ireland's old Burial Grounds will elucidate.
Each stone, looking like broken teeth, and each mound, is a grave. Maybe of many generations of a family. For graves were reused over and over again, in times of hardship and when folk were not as squeamish about death as we are today. For in a poor country and a poor family ...
The dead are greatly treasured and loved here. If you look at a graveyard, you will see great adornments there. The ruins of old abbeys and churches are the most valued of burial places; the holiest places nearest where the altar was.
Families would do anything to avoid a pauper's grave... And families would often dig the graves themselves, a practice only outlawed this year.
The utter desolation of the famine years was that thousands were never buried but simply lay and rotted where they died. And as this was often entire families, all the sacred rites and custome were perforce abandoned. The last living family member, surrounded by his dead, would pull the house down around him, an easy feat in hovels, before he died. Burying his precious kin.
And when emigration hit epidemic proportions, entire families left, so there was no one left to care for graves, and the rough stone markers eroded and were broken.
Tracing folk is made impossible as so many areas kept no burial records.
Often folk cannot take in that there was simply no one left to preserve graves. Let the dead bury their dead... Needs must.
The way the Irish treasure burial traditions and family burial places is seen in these old paces, where rich modern graves appear among the snags of stone.
The distinction between birth and death blurs in many lands. As life is held less than sacred and as the great gods money and sex prevail for so many.
A baby is lucky to avoid being murdered before birth; a few years ago the figure of a million abortions in Israel saddened and horrified.
When men desire perfect boy babies and refuse to allow their wives to use birth control, girl babies become dross.
To be born in these lands is to face death with only suffering in between these events. As to be born in lands where man-made famine exists. As it was in Ireland in those years.
In China, a healthy baby risks being stolen from a loving family and sold to foreigners who think they are doing good.
In Vietnam, street children are rounded up and euthanised; unless they can be adopted. A lady called Christina Noble here in Ireland is doing wonderful work among them; if you see her book, read it! She has a website.
The ones who are doing most are the so called little people; caring strong in their hearts and their lives given in passion.
Often they are those who have suffered in their own lives; Christina is one such as she and her siblings were "guests" of religious orders here and had appalling childhoods.
In India, babies born to prostitutes face terrible lives; we are among those working in that land.
When a society shuns and breaks the laws of God, evil creeps in in many forms and life as He made it and loves in endangered.
When anything becomes more important than His love and His laws, when men twist and pervert the Word of God for gratification of any kind.
Holland was among the first to legalise abortion, drugs, prositution, to welcome homosexuality; now it kills off its old in vast numbers because life has become less than precious.
Expediency is all to them.
The weak, the sick,... useless they say.
Let us treasure and support life in the vulnerable and needy. Let us protect the frail and vulnberable in the Name of Jesus. Let us not walk past on the other side and pretend that all is well, Itis not well and we can each and all help and support. Not roll our eyes heavenwards and say sanctimoniously that God will provide.
Through our compassion, our hands, our hearts, He will indeed provide.
Blessings this night.... calm day and sun...
