Faith.In.Life
Creation
The Rolling Hills of Northeastern Colorado
When God hovered over the waters I wonder if he was equally thinking of the hills that would roll on for miles in every direction for as far as the eye can see. I have often said that when the first settlers found their way to NorthEastern Colorado it must have been actively raining, even a wet season, only for them to set up shop and the rain stopped to never truly rain again. My wife has said that she loves to listen to the rain. While I remember storms they were few and far between. They might send us to our basement, but would not offer all that much actual rain. It is no question that the waters bring life, deliver us, and lead to green pastures. Frank Herbert in Dune writes:
The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time.
In the rolling hills of Northeaster CO water is precious and far between requiring the mind of Paul Atredes to help guide the natives. Certainly the past three generations have done their due diligence to figure out how to get water to crops, how not to burn pastures to cause lose and infertile top soil, and ultimately just how far one can farm before the hills get far too steep.
So where do you begin. *For what I might be able to get a hold of I hope to created a short appendix of how my parent’s genealogy. In short, the Brophy’s came from Ireland when the land struggled producing potatoes and Britain stole our barley. It’s the tale as old as time for the haves and the have nots, and the rich getting richer. And yet my great grandma Nora, of which my second daughter is named after, was a direct immigrant from Northern Ireland (of which we still have 5th and 6th cousins that stayed behind). To which one might wonder if God is so inclined to speak in an Irish accent to which I might bend my ear to listen. The Irish lineage has become huge, and for the longest time I thought that St. Patirck’s use of the three leaf clover to explain the Trinity was “clearly” the best example, only later to learn that it is in fact the worst form of modalism, of which the early church councils condemned. However, the Irish Catholic roots run deeply in my family, and whether I will acknowledge it or not, is a key and formative part of my story. I will often say that in my home town found somewhere amongst the rolling hills of northeastern CO you are a good person or else the consequences are real; and what is more, gossip ran rapid so much so that I often said “My parents knew what I did wrong before I did.”
It’s strange, though, that although I know my Irish genes best, and the genetics shine through in my three blond hair, blue eyed girls, my mother’s father’s mother was from the Chaktaw tribe originating from the Ozark. My Grandpa John had pitch dark hair with just a few streaks of gray until the day he died; so I am hopeful that if your hair line and loss come from your mother’s side of the family that I won’t have much of a problem with all that.
My parent’s mothers where one German and Norwegian. My father couldn’t say grandma clearly and would slur the word in such a say that he would say “grandmarr.” Eventually everyone called her Marr eventually, even to the extant that her license plate said as much, and I even have a cousins named Mara originating, really, from a nickname. Marr’s last name was Peterson descending from Germany. I once read a origination story from that side of that family, and part of this endeavor is to try to continue the very story that was began then, ever continuing the handing off of the baton. Marr married Ralph Bowman, and thus created the beginning of what would later become the Brophy and Bowman fall out - but that might be left to another story entirely. Marr and Ralph had Jean,Jean married Des, they had Douglas and his five siblings (Todd, Jacque, Tracy, Paula, and Tom)
My mother’s mom, Mary, is my spiritual guide in life. Wherever I go I know she is praying over me from the same house I have only ever known her to live at. Mary’s last name was Jacobson. There is one book where a medicine woman is going around the rolling hills of northeastern CO is healing much like Jesus. In that book you will find that the medicine’s woman’s last name was Jacoson, but as a good Norwegian name they did not pronounce the B until it became Americanized. My grandmother Mary will point out that this medicine woman was most likely her grandmother, my great grandmother, who was a nurse in the area. Mary married John, and they had my mother Joy along with her three siblings (LeaAnn, Mark, and Julie).
Mom and dad were high school sweet hearts. Certainly my mother was just a small town girl, and she has stories of a not so lonely world as she would visit my dad when he lived about ten miles out of town. My father was the first of his family to leave the farm and go to college while my mother followed somewhat in the footsteps of her father who performed his civic duties as a police officer who would often drive people in the ambulance to Denver (or another larger city in the Front Range). She would receive her degree in nursing. They would eventually bring what they learned back to the farm in Wray and my mother would offer her nursing training for her family.
My sister, Erin, was born in 1976. My brother, Daniel, was born in 1980. I was born in 1982. While technically this makes me a Millenial, being the youngest of two Generation Xers I once read an article about xennials that described me perfectly. I was formed so much by my father and sister’s music playlists that somehow spanned from Simon and Garfunkel and Neil Diamond to New Kids on the Block and Journey. But we never knew the reasons behind the songs we were listening to, and I at least could not perceive the good thing that the Lord was up to in our midst. Nor where we all that influenced by Hymns or contemporary Christian music, I knew nothing of the classics that I now can sing from memory, nor did I have any inclination of what a good friend of mine referred to as “Jesus Music.” And yet, my grandmother Mary was forever praying.
In my family, Growing up Irish Catholic meant you were a good person, but you never went to Mass (although I know this is different from many of my cousins who may have seen God to be a Tyrant ready to burn them at the stake for even being tempted). To a certain extent, to be a farmer meant you were always on call, and while my father did a very good job of working hard and playing harder as he tried to maneuver his what we might call God given duties to “nurture the grass” especially when the season came to pick up rocks (as Ecclesiastes puts it) and prepare for planting season. So I cannot blame him for any type of absence from mass, nor do I judge his heart. While he has always been hesitant about my call, he equally has been one of my biggest supporters. Nonetheless, my mother tried to introduce us to the Methodist church, where I was initially baptized as an infant. However, I don’t have many memories of that time. I remember there being a small box in front of the pulpit where the pastor would often sit down and call us kids up front for a children’s sermon. He would often pull out that box and have some sermon illustration hidden there-in, but I can’t tell you even one lesson I learned. What I do remember is two particular events. The first, was one of the piers in my Sunday school had somehow gotten a hold of keys and tried to eat them, or at least taste them. I remember that pier puking a green color that I never thought possible coming out of a person’s mouth. I also remember wondering in the madness of could you possibly eat keys.
The second memory is of me sobbing and crying uncontrollably because I did not want to be in Sunday school. I don’t know why I disliked it, and I am not sure what caused me to cry so. All I remember is I didn’t want to be there. When I was in third grade my parents gave my two older siblings the option to stop going to church on Sunday, and so naturally we all stopped going. Besides being a C & E Christian, and sometimes not even then, I stopped going to church until I was about 17 years old.
Those were now what I dubb the sinful years.