"Generational Echoes"...

Our youngest with my parents 'a generational echo'...

This has been another busy week with so much to do and so little time but we do what we can with what time and resources we have. Thank you God!

Last night I was able to take my parents to see their granddaughter at her Siva (dance) Samoa practice with Elei dance at Te Puke Hall in Otara.

They've only been here for a short time and plan to celebrate her birthday mid-month but will fly back to Samoa by the end of the month so they'll miss the dance performance but they did get the chance to watch her in action with the many girls who were dancing with her and their parents/guardians.

What was so neat about this journey was in consideration of our next Mana Mangere writers' publication I have been consciously aware of much of the knowledge and understandings that my parents hold, now both in their eighties, that this precious knowledge and love needs to be passed onto the next generation.

What has been a blessing has been for them to see are the values that they passed onto their children being now passed onto their grandchildren and that's when "generational echoes" that have been passed down to us from our forefathers and foremothers through our parents and their parents are exampled.

I first heard this concept through a discussion by our senior Ps Paul de Jong this year at our Life South church and it resonated with me and when I started considering what we might write about from last year's discussion with our writers' group, I knew it to be about the importance of this idea of shared inter-generational understandings and ensuring that those things of importance are shared between generations while there is the time...