Aunt Harriet’s legacy

For her birthday, I am buying Betsey a trip to Iqaluit to visit our daughter. The ticket money, which is considerable, will come from an annuity that my Aunt Harriet bought for me decades ago and which we have now cashed in. You could say that the old annuity has been redeemed. Rather a pregnant word for financial transactions. Aunt Harriet’s gift could also be called part of her legacy. Her real legacy was not financial, but the love she gave without thinking what she might leave behind. It was simply characteristic of her life.

You can’t plan this

I am cordially sick of hearing the word legacy. People are told over and over again that they should think about their legacy, the results of their lives, the money or institutions or practices that they will leave behind.

But here’s the trick: planning a legacy is foolishness, says the author of Ecclesiastes after summarizing his search for pleasure, wisdom and wealth. He found that achieving all these goals was meaningless, especially because whatever he accomplished could not be passed on as a legacy.

He “called it quits, gave up on anything that could be hoped for on this earth. What’s the point of working your fingers to the bone if you hand over what you worked for to someone who never lifted a finger for it?” He remarks in the same chapter: “And I hated everything I’d accomplished and accumulated on this earth. I can’t take it with me – no, I have to leave it to whomever comes after me. Whether they’re worthy or worthless – and who’s to tell? – they’ll take over the earthly results of my intense thinking and hard work. Smoke.” (Ecc. 2)

Eliot’s lost golf balls

T.S. Eliot speaks, in Choruses from the Rock, about the foolishness of a life that builds on other foundations; empire-building divorced from a focused faith in God:

“In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels
The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit
The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,
And the wind shall say:
‘Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls . . .’”

It seems to me that the only legacy that actually lives on is one that arises out of simple, obedient lives based on faith, love, mercy and respect. It is very difficult to destroy these things even after one is gone.

A way of life

Nevertheless, I am tempted to think about my legacy as husband and father, about my garden, my career as teacher, preacher, farmer and musician. But this seems to be the “end of the matter”. Let me paraphrase: “God forgives our empire-building dreams whether big or small. He remembers us and our pride and desire to live on in institutions, in families, children, businesses. He remembers that we are dust and loves us anyway and stays with us to the end of the end.” Here’s to faithful people like Aunt Harriet for whom giving was just a way of life, not a way to preserve a legacy.

Thanks be to God.