through which I view it. These are my memories, my baggage, my junk. No one can say it isn’t so, for they would only be replacing my world with their own.
PRESENT AT THE CREATION
I was born at an early age, and so I have difficulty remembering the day I emerged into this world. I don’t recall whether that September morning was a bright, sunny day that would be an indication, true or not, of the life to follow, or if it was a gray dawn that would mark a cloudy future.
Sometimes I think I remember the day, or at least my departure from the other side, the realm of the spirit. There is a legend that assumes the pre-existence of the soul and that at the moment of entry into this life, an angel puts her finger to the formless lips of the child-to-be and says simply, “Forget.”
There is then no longer a conscious awareness of the former existence until the return following death. There are only fragments of memory, a feeling that there is more to life than what we observe, some fleeting moments of yearning for what had been in another time, another existence, perhaps even in another state of being.
Lurking somewhere in the primal consciousness that begins developing in the cerebral cortex of the embryotic brain are the faint traces of that memory of a previous existence. It is that element that leads to religious constructs to explain who we are, where we have come from, how we can maintain contact with our spiritual origins, and what our purpose and our destiny might be.
A group of early Christians known as the pre-existiani believed that the souls of all persons existed before they were born. The early church theologian Origen shared this belief, and it was later perpetuated among the Albigenses who further developed the concept of Christian reincarnationism. Although Origen was condemned by the church at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, his beliefs continued as an expression of Christian mysticism.
My own belief is that I have entered this life with a purpose, and that my experiences—a combination of events, feelings, relationships, knowledge, and wisdom—all are part of why I am here. I am less certain as to why this purpose exists, whether for my eternal spiritual growth, or for some aggregate spiritual entity or collective unconsciousness in whom resides the totality of all that is and has been and is to be, and of which I am ultimately a part.
Nevertheless, I feel that there is a divine spark within me, a manifestation of the divine, the Christ-essence if you will, that makes me at one with all living creatures and spiritual entities on this planet and those that may exist throughout the universe.
If this sounds “esoteric,” that’s OK, because we are all “out of this world,” which is what esoteric literally means. We have our origins beyond the realm of time and space. What I have written, however, is a narrative of this temporal existence and my attempt to make sense out of my own life, those who are a part of it, and those who have skirted the edges of it bringing their own gifts of insight to my life.
FAMILIA
Genealogies tend to be boring. Only very few people are interested in the family trees of others, unless they happen to be a monarch, president, or someone of great renown. The writer of Matthew’s gospel includes the genealogy of Jesus, which contains some very notable celebrities of the Bible. It also contains some rather seedy characters that could embarrass some descendants.
Included among Jesus’ ancestors are Abraham, who put his own wife at risk in order to save himself; Jacob, who lied and cheated his brother out of his birthright; Tamar, a prostitute who fornicated with her father-in-law to produce a child; Rahab, a Canaanite spy and prostitute; Ruth, a foreigner, who had a questionable encounter with Boaz after he got drunk; David, an adulterer, who had Bathsheba’s husband placed in the front line of battle to cover up his sin; and Solomon, who had three hundred concubines and worshipped Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of love and fertility. With such a background it is no wonder that the church emphasized the virgin birth of Jesus.
My own family probably has its own cast of colorful characters. I have learned that my father’s family descended from an old and distinguished Italian line that traces its origins to the nobility of Naples. A genealogy requested by my cousin, Don Ciro Maria Serio, a priest in the town of Nocera Inferiore where many of the Serios lived, gives this brief history:
The Serios belong among the noble families of Naples. A branch was joined to the patrician family of Ostuni (Lecce) resulting, in the 18th century, in the births of Antonio and Ludovico Serio in Vicolo Equense in 1748. Ludovico was an extemporaneous poet from 1771. He was a professor of eloquent Italian at the University of Naples. He died fighting on the banks of the Sebeto (a little river of the Campania region which feeds into the Gulf of Naples). The battle pitted the Neopolitan soldiers defending the Holy Faith against the followers of the Partenopean Republic.
Various members of the House of Serio held power in the Reign of the Two Sicilies (Regno delle due Sicilie) under Ferdinand IV in 1854. The Serio family flourished and enjoyed nobility in Sicily as well as Naples.
The brevity of this description has led me to speculate on who was left out of the family tree and why. In 1955, Don Ciro requested the Instituto Genealogico Italiano to research the Serio family crest. They provided gratis the following description:
The antique helmet is placed on the shield as a remembrance of the cavalier, the military tasks, and also the expeditions to the Holy Land. The crown is that of nobility because the Serio had this distinction. The lion is the most noble animal of heraldry. The symbol represented the Command, the Grandeur, and Magnanimity. The lion holding the compass is showing the council of the strong and just man, the profound courage and knowledge of the world. The stars are configured to indicate the brightness of the future heirs. The undulating patterns are generally emblematic of the course of water and of the ocean waves.
The crest symbolizes the River Serio (a river of the province of Bergamo which feeds the Adda and subsequently joins the Po and with these feeds the Gulf of Venice and then the Adriatic Sea) and represents the meaning spoken by the name Serio.
The information was obtained from the original framed crest owned by Fr. Ciro. Since his death, the crest is in possession of his niece, Maria Picaro, in Nocera Inferiore. In the 1980’s, Emilio Serio, working from a photograph of the crest and a heraldric description, painted the Serio family crest that was distributed to the New Jersey clan of Luigi Serio.
There is something ironic about the children of poor immigrants displaying an icon of lost nobility and the faded grandeur of past history when they have achieved their own success and placed their own stamp on the heritage they will pass on to their children.
In the new science of epigenetics there is evidence that the life experiences of parents can affect the genetic character of their children so that behavioral traits can be passed down through generations. It may also explain cultural memory, the retention of habits and traditions, as well as the Jungian concept of racial memory. We do inherit more than we think we do from our ancestors.
Today, Serios can be found in abundance in both Campania and Sicily, which appears to be their prime habitat. There is a village in Sicily in which the name Serio is quite common. The territory of southern Italy and Sicily was occupied in ancient times by the Greeks and then by the Romans. After the fall of the Roman Empire when the northern half of Italy was controlled by the Pope and various European princes, the southern half remained in Byzantine hands until it was eventually seized in turn by Saracens, Franks, Catalans, and many others. Southern Italians might have various strains of Greek, Arab, and Spanish in their bloodlines.
There is some irony in that after Anna (one of the daughters of Luigi) married a Lebanese Maronite named Abood, Anna’s brothers and sisters teased her children
