Timeless Bonds: Chain of Fathers

Dominoes (Human, Not Pizza)

Even if you have never played the game or played with them, I think that most folks are familiar with dominoes. I am not thinking about the game but about the domino effect.

I imagine that most folks have seen dominoes lined up in intricate and precise patterns. It is really amazing the many patterns that can be created with dominoes. I’m sure that you have seen how tipping that first domino causes it to come into contact with the next domino in the sequence causing it to tip; and so on and so on and so on until all of the dominoes have fallen.

https://youtu.be/2u7MpC2Rc18

Now, please, imagine that the first domino had not been put into motion. If that had happened, then the entire reaction would not have occurred. Imagine that there was a gap in the dominoes. If there had been a gap in the dominoes, the reaction would have ceased when the domino that was supposed to tip the next domino had not been present to do so.

I mention dominoes because our presence here on Earth has been the result of a big beautiful domino effect. Imagine that first domino being “X” times great grandma and grandpa. Imagine that the next domino in the sequence is “X-1” great grandma and grandpa, and so on and so on and so on; until that last domino is YOU. If that first “X” times great grandma and grandpa had not been there, none of the dominoes that follow would have been there to fall. If great-grandma and grandpa had not been there, then the domino effect would have stopped with the great-great-grandparents and you would not be here.

This is just a simple analogy. It doesn’t take into account all of the domino effects that led to each of our greats…It doesn’t take into account that the conception of each individual in the succeeding generation was only possible during a finite period of seven to ten days in the lives of their parents. What if great-great-grandpa had been away for church tent revival during the time great-grandma was conceived? What if your mother had been in the hospital with the flu when the egg that became you burst from her ovary and made its way down the fallopian tube? Myriad events could have happened that would have stopped the beautiful domino effect that led to you!

When you think about it, just the fact that we are here is quite amazing. To me, our presence is just too incredible to think that it is somehow the result of random chance. To my way of thinking, believing that it is the result of chance is akin to believing that a person could open a box of dominoes and casually pour them out onto the table. There they would, by chance, be arranged in a precise and intricate pattern. Then, by chance, some random force would tip that first domino that would lead to the domino that is you.

That just doesn’t fly with me.

In honor of our fathers for Father’s Day; here are photos of some of the dominoes that have led to me! Unfortunately, there are certainly gaps in my photos, portraits. Most of my dominoes lived before the advent of photography, some just didn’t have access to it, others may have been shy, and some may have just not had time for such “foolishness”!