As individuals, we are cut off from the dense and intricate networks of life within us. A simple instance of this is when you cut your finger, the surprise of seeing your own blood flow. We forget the tree of bone and the bush of blood that flows within us. Blood is one of the most ancient and wisest streams in the universe. It is the stream of ancestry. An ancient bloodline flows from the past generations until it reaches and creates us now. Blood holds and carries life. From mythic times, blood has been at the heart of sacrifice; life was offered both as plea and praise to the deities. The Catholic Eucharist still centres on the transfiguration of the wine of the earth into the divine blood of the Redeemer. This consecration is not merely a memorial of the past event. The divine presence in the Eucharist is understood as an actual participation in the ongoing memory of God.
Superficially, a family might look like an accidental gathering of individuals called together by the chance meeting of a man and a woman who fell in love and wanted to express the depth of their love in procreation. At a deeper level, a family is an incredible intertwining of multiple streams of ancestry, memory, shadow, and light. Each home hosts the arrival of history and assists the departure of new destiny. The walls of the home contain immense happenings that occur gradually under the subtle veil of normality. Though each family is a set of new individuals, ancient relics and residues seep through from past generations. Except for our parents and grandparents, our ancestors have vanished. Yet ultimately and proximately, it is the ancestors who call us here. We belong to their lifeline. While they ground our unknown memory, our continuity bestows on them a certain oblique eternity. In our presence we entwine past and future. Virgil underlines the beautiful value of “pietas.” It means much more than duty; it is prospective as well as retrospective. Though Aenaeas is utterly committed to his huge and painful destiny, he is concerned for his son as well as his father.
The loneliness and creativity of being a parent is the recognition that family is inevitably temporary. Good parenting is unselfish and, to encourage independence in a child that has received unconditional love, acts to reinforce the sense and essence of belonging. Nothing, not even departure, can sever that intrinsic sense of belonging. Children are created to grow and leave the nest. Family provides the original and essential belonging in the world. It is the cradle where identity unfolds and firms. Such belonging outgrows itself. Home becomes too small and too safe. The young adult is called by new longing to leave home and undertake new discovery. The difficulty for parents is letting them go. In a certain sense, parents and children never leave each other; this is a kinship that no distance can sever. However, in a substantial sense, part of the task of maturity is to become free of one’s parents. Clinging to parents causes a destructive imbalance in one’s life. One never achieves an integral sense of self-possession if one’s parents continue to dominate large regions of one’s heart. To grow is to come to know their fragility, vulnerability, and limitation. There is great poignancy and pathos in parents’ difficulty in letting go. Kahlil Gibran says, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.”