A SECOND WEDDING RING

Look at your fingers. An evolutionary work of art. Now look at your keypad. An electronic work of science. Whenever you put art and science together, you get remarkable results. Sometimes even historic ones...!

However, even though my computer-poised fingers can reach out to the farthest limits of our planet and to the deepest layers of our knowledge, what most intrigues me about them is my second wedding ring. It rests right next to my first, and together they afford me a comforting sense of human continuity. When you hear their story, you may want to get a second ring for yourself
The first is the gold wedding band Joan slipped on my finger that sun-lit April at Holy Name Cathedral. The second was given by J to L in the year of our Lord 1803. Now I don't exactly know who J and L were, but this 18K gold band has passed down through the generations of my Mother's family ever since. I wear it to remember the generational beads of continuity that constitute my family's necklace of life. Whenever I start to think the world began the day I was born, I look at that 206-year-old ring.
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There's more than sentiment at work here. All too often our commanding arsenal of personal computers and Iphones can seduce us into believing today has so much to offer, that our yesterdays were merely pale preludes. Not true! Each year we uncover more of the mysteries and marvels of the Ancients, of their long forgotten inventions and accomplishments. The same truth fits our own families as well.

When I study my hands, my eyes, my vocal inflections, even my beliefs, I have to wonder what small part of these were inherited from J and L. Just like the J's and L's in your own family history, there were entire genetic galaxies circling around each of the births throughout each of those ensuing 10 generations.When J loved L, Napoleon ruled Europe, Thomas Jefferson was in the White House, slavery was in the ascendancy, and some of their grand-children were destined to fight and die in the Civil War.

Some of what and who I am today traces back like a time-machine to that mysterious J and L. Were the young...beautiful... bright...Christian or Jew, rich or poor, city or farm? What made them laugh? What made them dream? What were their origins? You and I may never know such answers, but each of us is living some of those answers. And if this is true of our two families, then so is it true of the millions of families we call America.

Today, we millions seek new and safer futures for each of our own genetic galaxies. And that is entirely proper. At the same time, though, our search benefits whenever we pause to look back from where the search first began. At Holy Name Cathedral that long ago April, the priest spoke of the Church's belief in "the communion of saints." That article of faith that holds that every life from the beginning of time to the present and into the unborn future are all in some way bonded together
In our American ethos of rugged individualism, communion and community and collectivism are sometimes left behind on the trails of rugged progress. But whenever I look at this second wedding ring, I can't help hearing J and L whispering to me from somewhere: "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent..."

This poet, John Donne -- I notice his name begins with a J.....