The following was the sermon message, entitled ‘Kirkin’ of the Tartans’ delivered on Tartan Sunday of 2014…

As you all likely know by now, my Dad’s family is Italian; very Italian.   We have relatives that immigrated to the US as late as the 1920’s, some that stayed, and some that went back.   I have a first cousin that lives in Rome and a whole family line that spider webs all over Italy, starting smack where the ankle would be in the boot.

For my father this identity was critically important.   His family spoke Italian, the ate Italian, and they lived in heavily fortified Italian areas.   This was part of heritage for which he was and is incredibly proud.     That identification by default became ours.

As much as my Dad history was open, my mom’s is more subtle. After I became a pastor, my family entrusted the Family Bible into my care, and in it, I discovered hundreds of years of births and deaths that revealed a family whose American tree twisted and turned all the way back to English settlers that arrived to America just over a decade after the Mayflower arrived.     On that tree, a large chunk of long forgotten relatives began arriving in the l800’s from Scotland.
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