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Donna's Journal
We Are The  Chosen


This poem was on the rootsweb Howard list and I thought you might enjoy  it.
Bobby

We Are The  Chosen

We are the chosen.  In each family there is one who seems  called to find the ancestors.  To put flesh on their bones and make them  live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and  approve.

Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead,  breathing life into all who have gone before.  We are the storytellers of  the tribe.  All tribes have one.  We have been called, as it were, by  our genes.  Those who have gone before cry out to us, "Tell our  story!"   So, we do.

In finding them, we somehow find  ourselves.  How many graves have I stood before now and cried?  I have  lost count.  How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a  wonderful family; you would be proud of us."  How many times have I walked  up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me?  I cannot  say.

It goes beyond just documenting facts.  It goes to who am I and  why do I do the things I do.  It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost  forever to weeds and indifference and saying, "I can't let this happen."   The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh.  It goes to  doing something about it.  It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able  to accomplish, how they contributed to what we are today.  It goes to  respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their  resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family.

It goes to  deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a  Nation.  It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing  it for us.  It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth.  Without them we could not exist, and so we love each one,  as far back as we can reach.

That we might be born who we are.  That  we might remember them.  So we do. With love and caring and scribing  each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we  are.  So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family.  It is up  to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place  in the long line of family storytellers.

That is why I do my family  genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the  memory or greet those whom we had never known before.

Author  Unknown


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