Genealogy is more than just a hobby; it’s a spiritual lens in which we see ourselves and our world more vividly. In the Bible, genealogy is a sacred architecture often linking ordinary people to a divine purpose.
Whether through paint, film, dance, or word, the act of
making becomes more profound when we create with the collaboration of those who
came before. In the book Art and Faith: A Theology of Making, artist
Makoto Fujimura writes that:
“Unless
we are making something, we cannot know the depth of God’s being.”
Genealogical research itself is a form of making and an act
of spiritual participation that unlocks history and the story of our very
selves.
The structure of research can unlock stories from faraway
lands, forgotten communities, and underrepresented lineages. Census records,
church archives, naming patterns…these are not just data points, but emotional
and narrative portals.
As a filmmaker that makes what I call “Genealogical Cinema”,
I can look at early motion pictures, Arrival of a Train (1895) and Roundahay
Garden Scene (1888) and see that they are wonderful moments of everyday
life captured in a format that was revolutionary for the time. Not only are
they interesting to me from a genealogical perspective to what they show of the
era they represent but now they have become treasured archival material that
can be utilized in a new way, in my case possibly as “b-roll” in my latest
documentary, Going Fine Since 1889: The Magical Armstrongs.
Genealogy answers a deep human impulse to connect past and present through story.
