Connecting With Our Ancestors: Weekly Summary

All Soul’s Day

Sunday 
We all need to feel and know, at the cellular level, that we are not the first ones who have suffered, nor will we be the last. We are all partners with both the living and the dead, walking alongside countless ancestors and descendants who were wounded and longed for healing. 
—Richard Rohr 

Monday 
Christianity hides its ancestors in plain view. Those familiar with the Bible know that Jesus had a very public conversation with ancestors in full view of chosen disciples. We choose safe words and images like prayer and transfiguration to soothe our discomfort with ancestor contacts that require the crossing of dimensions. 
—Barbara Holmes 

Tuesday 
It seems to me the victory over death is when somebody, because of the good he’s done for others, becomes part of future humanity, which will be resurrected. Even though your death is obscure and nobody remembers it, you stay alive in the consciousness of humanity. 
—Ernesto Cardenal 

Wednesday 
When we die, we don’t go anywhere, but rather, we cross over into unmediated, infinite union with God. We cross over into loving God, with God’s own love for God, which is the Holy Spirit.  
—James Finley 

Thursday 
Inside the enclosure of the sweat lodge, the animals and ancestors move into the human body, into skin and blood. The land merges with us…. We who easily grow apart from the world are returned to the great store of life all around us, and there is the deepest sense of being at home here in this intimate kinship.  
—Linda Hogan 

Friday 
Living in the communion of saints means that we can take ourselves very seriously (we are part of a Great Whole) and not take ourselves too seriously at all (we are just a part of the Great Whole) at the very same time. 
—Richard Rohr  

Week Forty-Four Practice 
Ancestors, Past and Future 

Potawatomi author Kaitlin Curtice looks at pictures of herself and considers her future role as an ancestor: 

I realized then that one day I am going to be an ancestor. When I have passed on and my spirit is left to lead my children and their children, they will talk about me, about my legacy, about what I left undone or what I did to change things. I realized that these photos are an actual embodiment of sacred life…. So, I remember my ancestors. I remember what they have left for me, and I remember what was left undone. I look at their pictures, searching their eyes for stories they may never have told us when they were alive. Instead, they visit us in dreams, reconnecting us, helping us imagine a new way forward, a way of peace. One day we will become ancestors, but until then, we whisper to our long-gone ones, asking that they remember us.  

Passed On One,  
I see you there.  
Not your skin and bones,  
nor the frame that once held you.  
I see your aura,  
your spirit,  
your essence. 

I see the glow of who you once were  
and who you are today.  
I see, somehow,  
the imprint of what you’ve left me here.  

It’s not a thumbprint, but some other form  
of spirit-code.  
Somehow, the shape of you  
carves lines into the essence of who I am. 
Somehow, I am enough  
because you were  
enough.  

Ancestor, your name will always be  
the sound of breath in my lungs.  

Ancestor, your face will always look  
like the face of my own children.  

Ancestor, your essence  
will always feel like  
the wind  
when it slips 
through the tree branches,  
singing a song. 

You, Dear One, lead me, still.  

I feel the gifts you’ve left me 
and I wonder how much more  
is waiting. 

I learn my own way as I  
reckon with your mistakes  
and realize that you were human once,  
like I am human now.  

I wonder how much you notice  
from the other side.  

What does God feel like?  

I’ll wait,  
and one day,  
you’ll show me.  

Reference: 
Kaitlin B. Curtice, Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God (Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020), 88–90. Used by permission. 

Image Credit: Ravi Sharma, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, India, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. There is a wisdom that knows humanity as one continuous breath—the veil between worlds thin and alive—where the memory of our ancestors moves through our very cells.