These Sparkling Genes

"We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do and more in the light of what they suffer"

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer - 

 My father was a great admirer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work. He was a German theologian...an anti Nazi dissident. I remember his name being mentioned throughout my childhood/adolescence. These words have stayed with me ever since I read them yesterday helping me  go deeper into my current forgiveness journey.

Today I held the hand of my father's last remaining cousin , who must be in her nineties, at the funeral of her partner who died on 4th January aged 100.

He was part German and deeply affected by the rise of Nazism in pre-war Germany ....was a member of CND and a great peace campaigner all his life.

 I only knew him briefly in his later years but I found it so moving to be in the presence of this branch of my father's family...his mother's side ...his cousin spoke about my grandmother  - her Aunty Ruth. They all have the same blue-grey, bright eyes -  twinkling, humorous. It was like my father was in the room with me and my sisters... and one of our cousins ....and the daughter of another.....these sparkling genes still embedded in us and the generations to come.