Generations

“If you live long enough, you become your parents’ parents and your childrens’ children.” Someone told me this a long time ago; it continues to play out in my own life. In fact, the generational thing is happening in obvious ways this weekend.

Our boys (ages 30 and 36, bless their hearts) are here accomplishing the rough-n-tough seasonal lakeside jobs: removing boats and pier sections from the water. They also have been researching/discussing recently, and took their dad on a shopping trip last night to buy new cell phones for the two of us. Even more noble and courageous, they’re promising to counsel us through the steep-and-slick senior citizen techno-learning-curve.

Meanwhile, our 5-year-old grandson gags on his mashed butternut squash (which is seasoned with brown sugar and butter, no less) and insists his red bell peppers NOT be cut in thin strips, goodness gracious sakes alive, which is totally unacceptable. I’m not sure how he fits in with the general melee of age-related observations, except it hit me that in a few years he’ll be the one rescuing his dad (the one currently counting one, two, three with the threat of punishment if his son doesn’t choke down that evil squash).

Although a lot of my old college English-major exposure has melted into oblivion, every once in a while a quote will come to mind. Just now I thought of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that left its mark way back then, even before I knew the Lord or had any concept about God’s involvement in human life. “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod” and “the Holy Ghost…broods” over those generations.


The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins