Thought for the Day, 11 October 2008

The Rev Roy Jenkins

Half a million people left the mining valleys of South Wales in the great depression between the two world wars, and many more have gone since. This week the Welsh Assembly Government launched a plan to get their descendants back. Not to live, that is, but to discover their roots.

We want to repair the broken links, said the deputy minister for regeneration, and he promised, 'We will welcome them back with open arms.'

So for all those exiles and children of exiles dreaming of Acapulco or Abu Dabi for the next exotic break, forget it: you have a past to explore, and there are long lost relatives to be looked up in Abercarn and Abercwmboi. Incidentally, you need to know about the big pit you can go down, the ironmaster's castle you can inspect, and the miles of cycle tracks along freshly greened hillsides; because the great Heads of the Valleys Homecoming as it's called is also an unashamed pitch for the tourist pound.

With the mines long gone, along with most other heavy industry, it's a worthy enough aim - why shouldn't people see the places where their forebears toiled in appalling conditions, and yet managed to forge communities which bubbled with creative energy?

The desire for roots can be a very powerful one. It drives some adopted people to extraordinary endeavours to find their natural parents. It feeds the flourishing business of tracing ancestors and constructing family trees, maybe even the whole heritage industry.

The assumption is that we never completely know who we are, never discover ourselves, unless we know where we've come from, understand the influences which have helped shape us.

The Hebrew scriptures regularly encourage readers to consider the ways the God of their fathers had dealt mercifully with them as a people; and two of the writers of the Christian gospels take family line with great seriousness. Matthew begins his with the words: 'The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.' Luke goes further, arriving eventually at 'the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.'

We might nitpick the detail, but that list, it seems to me, points to an origin which any of us may claim even if every other link in the chain has been lost to us, and we're fearful of digging lest we find stuff we can't handle. We are all invited to discover ourselves as children of the Adam who was himself the child of God.

Jesus tells of the son who blows his inheritance on foreign adventures, and on his impoverished, shamefaced return home finds a father who welcomes, forgives and shows he still regards him as a son. It's his moment of regeneration.

I don't imagine it's exactly what sponsors of The Heads of the Valleys Homecoming had in mind. But it's not a bad model.