Our daughter-in-law’s mother, Mary, is a high school Advanced Placement American History teacher. She is also a person with a passionate interest in researching family histories. Mary has been researching ours. Her research has been proving to be an emotional and informative experience for me. Among other things, I have gone “over the river and through the woods” to my great, great grandmother’s house.
As a part of Mary’s research, she found the published obituary of my maternal great, great grandmother, Angeline. I have been struck by some of the words which were written about Angeline nearly 100 years ago.
“Her faith was without shadow, her convictions clear and definite, her purpose and will of such strength as to live the convictions which were hers. She was not aesthetic or fanatic and not much trammeled with dogmas but possessed a warm neighborly heart and with charity went about doing good.”
My great, great grandmother sounds as if she would have been a wonderful person to have known! (I guess in an important way I do know her…by excellent report).
We certainly live in a different time than she did (1839 – 1931). Considering today’s corrupted beliefs, for instance, I cannot imagine a “faith without shadow.” But that expressed, I certainly admire her having the “strength as to live the convictions which were hers.”
Such strength by itself could certainly be a description of a ranting ideologue. But the quality of Angeline’s life of conviction is in the wonderful context of a most encouraging further description.
“She was not aesthetic or fanatic and not much trammeled with dogmas but possessed a warm neighborly heart and with charity went about doing good.”
“Not much trammeled”… I looked up trammeled to be sure of its meaning. It means that Angeline was not restricted or hindered in her thoughts and actions by religious pronouncement. AMEN! ALLELUIA!! I AM PROUD TO BE HER DESCENDANT! What a great thing not to be “trammeled” by dogmas!!
It has not been lost on me that my great, great grandma Angeline would have been 22 years old when Abraham Lincoln was President and giving his second annual message to Congress. I like to think and imagine that she would have read it.
In that address to our very divided, Civil War-torn country, Lincoln concluded with these words about dogmas:
“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
Angeline seems to have been one of those folks amid the great civil strife of her time who resolved to save the union…and keep on saving it. She lived a life that disenthralled herself (set free) from unquestioned attitudes or beliefs.
Dogmas are still inadequate to our stormy present. Angeline’s way of life is still what will save our country.
Indeed, as the pandemic infects us by the hundreds of thousands and will likely end up killing us in equal numbers, the dogmas of the past preached in the present are inadequate. As the current president – unlike a much different Republican President of the past – stokes the fires of crippling social dogmas to divide us in civil strife, the dogmas of the past are not only inadequate, but dangerous.
As churches advocating the dogmas of American civil religion as justification for making the judgment of damnation on the souls of those persons not filling their actual or virtual pews, those dogmas erect new crosses.
So, where is the encouraging word?
I find it at my great, great grandmother Angeline’s house…and the houses she enriched over her long life; a life which knew many great trials and storms.
Angeline lived during actual slavery when black lives were sold. And it did not matter. Except, of course, to people going about doing good and crying out for the abolition of such cruelty. And all her life she lived in the midst of legalized segregation, strict Jim Crow laws and lynching.
Great, great grandma Angeline went about doing good when over 600,000 American lives were ended by the Civil War. She lived during its aftermath of overwhelming social upheaval and great need. Angeline went about doing good during the economic crash of the 1880’s, the westward expansion and its attendant destruction of Native American people. She went about doing good during the decades of opium and alcohol addictions that thwarted so many, many families.
Angeline, until she was in her eighties, could not vote for change. But she could go about doing good untrammeled by the dogmas that disenfranchised human beings based on their gender.
Great, great grandma Angeline lived through the separations of the Spanish/American War, World War One, the world-wide flu pandemic that took the lives of thousands and thousands of Americans who never heard much about a face mask or even had the foggiest notion of the value of front-line, medical responders or ICU beds with respirators. But, in the face of it all and without 24 news cycles and any chance to share a zoom family connection, Angeline was not much trammeled by dogmas but went about with grace just doing good.
So, as we face this stormy present with its enormous trials and upheaval, great, great grandma has the enduring truth of what save us. Angeline has the experienced, spiritual truth that holds us together in our stormy present.
Angeline’s life of faith without shadow says, “You will get through this! Like those who have gone before you and known great trials, disenthrall yourselves from religious and political dogmas. Do not be trammeled by them. And above all else, have the grace and charity to go about doing good.”