The Religion Of Race

The Religion of Race

My father was born in County Tipperary, Ireland in 1903, and he was to witness a lot of the trauma which involved Europeans during this century; including the Irish uprising in 1916. He remembered how Dublin's dogs howled as the bullets whined, and this blended into an unfamiliar and unsettling sound that persisted for days.

He remembered the Irish Civil War in 1922. At that time he had been learning the cabinet making trade directly across the street from the Customs House in Dublin, until a co-worker called him out to watch the great fire before the last great gun battle of that era gun battle.

He remembered the gangsters of Chicago in 1931, and World War Two England from 1939 through 1945.

And he managed to live until he was 86 years of age, when he quietly died in his bed, but it wasn't the bed that a German bomb had once left, strangely, high up in a tree.

An especially quiet and dignified product of Ireland's Protestant culture, having even a regal kind of appearance, at least one neighbour convinced herself that dad was a retired judge.

But he was never more than an especially hardworking aircraft builder, who began and ended his career in cabinet making. We knew dad was the grandson of an admiral in Britain's navy, though, and it easily explained the rare qualities he inherited.

Decades earlier dad had seen something special in mom besides her Irish Catholic culture, so he converted (as least by what was to be recorded in a church record book) to marry her, and eventually they had three children. Two of these were born in England, my brother in 1947 and myself in 1948, before dad brought us all to San Francisco in 1954.

Here they had a daughter, Lynn, in 1957. Dad had been to this country in the early thirties, where he served as a test pilot, engineer, and construction supervisor at Henry Ford's airplane manufacturing plant. There were many occasions which revealed dad's especially strong charisma; such as the day when Henry Ford arrived with his son Edsel by seaplane to tour the plant.

As the entourage ascended the ramp from the water, and moved past an appreciative crowd, Edsel broke away to the rope barrier and enthusiastically hollered out: "Hi, Al. How's everything in your department?" And Henry Ford, not showing the slightest impatience, waited as Edsel chatted with one of his favourite employees. As would be expected, dad always saw America as a place offering incredible opportunities.

That was especially true during that time, when Detroit was the centre of world opportunity. Dad loved Americans, and he was determined to be one himself; though he never lost his Irish accent. In 1954, as the ship H.M.S. Queen Mary entered New York harbour with our emigrating family, he and mom excitedly called out for my brother and I to come quickly.

They wanted us to see something from a port hole located just above the padded bench seat they were sitting on. And though dressed in their finest clothes, and ourselves in little suits, they were buoyed up by a nervous expectation; for few would ever have guessed that there was but forty

British pounds to declare in this family's Irish passport.

My brother and I quit our game of playing tag around the dining room tables, and we took turns being held high enough to peer out. It was dark, the ship was now slowly entering New York Harbour, and adult hands were blocking the glare of ballroom light on the glass where I pressed my nose. I could see the silhouette of a huge statue out there in the driving rain.

"What do you see?"

My mother wanted me to confirm that I could see something extraordinary:

"I see a lady with a torch, Mammy,"

This was said in an old world accent that has long since eroded for me. And although the full symbolism of the lady was indecipherable for me at that moment and Americans might think the vignette suspiciously corny when they heard it told, Liberty made an impression that is forever etched into my consciousness.

Prior to seeing her I had already seen a lot for a six year old; that included the rationing, housing shortage, and military debris of post war England; the thatched roofed houses of Ireland, and the Queen Mary riding out a storm at sea. My father and I came to sharing such reminisces one day, while we were sitting in the yard behind the house where he had retired in Northern California.

The sun had climbed high overhead, and without either of us having to verbalize it our camaraderie of the moment was intensified. Somehow the tranquillity gave us a sense that death might not be far way; the "Grim Reaper" as dad loved to quip. And that was an accurate enough estimate, for

in few years he actually did die.

Our conversation completed all kinds of turns that day, going through adventures both humorous and frightening. Like the time the rain suddenly swept over us as we fished at San Francisco's Lake Merced. And it was accompanied by a wind so strong that we couldn't row our boat under the narrow bridge that joins the two parts of that lake.

Finally we resorted to one of us pulling the boat with a rope along the bank, while the other used a single oar to gouge furiously at the water. Eventually the team work got us through, and we resumed a more normal rowing on the other side. Then there was the night we drove back from Reno, Nevada, and a broken water pump threatened to leave us stranded along the road.

Somehow we managed to give the water pump another gasp, again and again, by constantly hunting for and taking water from the outside faucets of closed businesses just off the highway. On this far more relaxed day in Northern California, dad became a bit pensive, and we got into more spiritual contemplations when he was prompted to say: "I know you believe some things very different from what I believe, and so I was wondering where you think we'll be after we die?"

His concentration was zeroed in like an archer poised to strike at some distant target, and I could see this would be one of those few times when he'd listen for as long as it took to understand this unfamiliar side of his son. And I began: "Race is my religion. I look there for the answers to the greatest of life's puzzles."

And he asked "What answer do you get on this one, about the afterlife?" And I offered: "I see the seasons come and go, as nature brings life and then death in continuous cycle. And I see ourselves as an integral part of that process, not just something separate from it." An especially active sportsman, one who hunted and fished throughout his life, he was on the right wavelength for this.

 Then he said: "But what becomes of us when we die?" And I turned to look at him for emphasis: "When the plants growing on this earth have done their job they die, but look in the spring and they come back to us. Very few things about them really change, though they sometimes adjust to survive in a changed environment.

Enough of them must survive and prosper, then multiply themselves. When you die you can count on living through me and your other children, through our relatives, through everyone who inherits your genes."

 Then he said" "And what of us as individuals. Are we just dead forever?" Your DNA is passed along, and because of that I resemble you.

That's still not a complete survival of me," he added, with the especially quick response of someone who was concerned about the finer details of race for quite some time. And to that I said: "Isn't it true that our personality survives the loss of physical limbs? Why then should we be distressed if our complete personality doesn't survive in any one descendant?

It seems an incorrect assumption to believe we are ever truly alone in this world? No, we travel everywhere with an inheritance; for no matter what difficulties and appointments arise our family is with us." You will live on in a future that others must shape. And they will meet challenges that no individual could ever contend with alone.

They will be people who are determined to live in a noble way, and they will gladly risk their very lives to preserve and advance the race that created someone like you. Difficulties, disappointments, even death itself will knock us down, but accepting our family in its widest sense is what lifts us up again."

Yes, it would be an incorrect assumption to believe that the purpose of the individual, of our genes, is to survive alone. And dad said: "I notice the Bible has a lot of genealogy information, and devotes considerable space to the genealogy of Jesus; so what you're saying is in line with what I believe as well."

And to emphasize that there wasn't a great distance between our generations, he added: Whether you are right or the preachers are right, we will survive the death of our physical forms." "Yes," that's true" I said. "And you and I will always be together." Then he smiled, and I read on his face that he was no longer worried, because we certainly were there together.

And the sun continued to shine down on us, but now it took on a blessedness that I had never really experienced before.

The Cycle

Come kneel amid the breathing earth

and contemplate its growth

Searching throughout distant stars

reflecting patterns to your soul

For what do you seek of all the world?

Can it possibly surpass the bud's unfurl?

Then gaze upon its very soul

The changing leaves of fall will pass

to rest upon the sparkling Frost

As once the warrior having lived

looking forward now to winter's still

And the end? It never arrives where life is embraced

by H. Michael Barrett