Tradition lost

November 30, 2014

We bounced on the scene fifty years ago with energy, youth, and great expectations. We had a firm handle on addresses of friends, neighbors, and relatives we would eagerly send Christmas greetings each year as a token of friendship and remembrance of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We sent them in early December and eagerly await the glistening cards and messages of hope. The personal messages we carefully placed inside the cards became a “one size fits all” cheery message about our family and how they had grown and progressed in life. About twenty years ago, the messages we sent and received slowed down to a trickle, but we still enjoyed them and continued corresponding; in many cases only on the occasion of Christmas. In the beginning we had a list that we groomed and improved each year, but time has a way of withering our enthusiasm and dimming our memories. Addresses got lost, people died, divorced, forgot about us, and the list dwindled to a relative small size. Three years ago we stopped sending cards and letters and went with the thrill of the day – E MAIL. We talked recently about many of the people we have enjoyed as friends and found that we had no idea of where they were or what they were doing. We fared equally as well with relatives, noting that we that we had lost track of many cousins and others.

Jean has reconnected with one cousin in the last year and found great reciprocal joy in sharing notes about family circumstances. We met with friends from my high school days in Scottsdale for lunch and solved all the problems on earth. Thursday and Friday of this week we celebrated Thanksgiving and shared beautiful experiences, watched our children and grandchildren learn about and play with each other. We talked about their college, high school, and elementary school activities and found the cycle of life to be working well. We observed that some have brilliant minds and other are more like Jean and me. We both floundered through school, through social and athletic experiences, and consider ourselves extremely blessed to have survived those experiences; then grown together as a team through good times and bad.

My dear cousin Clara Jo Fitch (Candelaria) recently made what she called her last pilgrimage to New Mexico to see family and experience – once again – the land of enchantment. She was not able to get to Utah so she called me and we had a delightful visit. Several months before my mother, Lucy Baca Jacobs Livermore, passed away Jo made a special trip to Utah to visit with mother regarding her spiritual health. Jo is a life-long Catholic and mother converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when she was in her mid thirties. Mother was always one that wanted to please her family and Jo was on a mission to return mother to the Catholic Church. Mother always had warm feelings for the Catholic Church because of her heritage and the beautiful message of Christ which both her childhood church and the Church of Jesus Christ hold as the centerpiece of spirituality.  In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a list of thirteen Articles of Faith set the stage for understanding how mother could be an active, temple attending member of the LDS Church and still hold these beautiful feelings for the people, the heritage, and the spiritual message of the Catholic faith. The thirteenth article shares the admonition of Paul in which he declares that all truth is from God.  “ . . . we believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” Capped with the first article of faith, “We believe in God the Father, and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost” mother found great strength in her faith in God, in her hope for an eternal reunion with her family, and with a desire to understand and embrace Charity – the pure love of Jesus Christ.

All humanity must hold close to the truths provided in God’s law. We must unite together in understanding and love of family and country under God. May we share our blessings with our family, friends, and countrymen through understanding and love.

Duane Jacobs, grandfather, father, husband, brother, cousin, uncle and friend