The Blessings of Our Ancestors*
This blessing calls you home again
to your collective inheritance of blood and bone,
calls you to dance with generations
who shimmer beyond the veil.
We call on the great cloud of witnesses,
the ones who inspire our courage,
support our endurance,
kindle our joy, whisper words of hope.
May the wise and well ones,
who are vibrant and radiant with healing,
who have stepped into the expanse of love
without hesitation, whose hearts are open wide,
shower you with their blessing
so you know your ancient inheritance.
Stand at a threshold
and whisper some of their names,
grandmothers and grandfathers,
back through hundreds and thousands of years,
prayers and supplications
for all that helps you navigate this world with ease.
May they form a circle of protection around you
to guard from anything that would wish you harm.
Open the eyes of your heart to see
they are already here, already dancing
through your feet, your hips, your hands,
the embrace of your arms,
the undulations of your spine, the smile on your lips.
This blessing dances in the threshold space with you,
at the turning of dawn or dusk,
helping your heart stay open, attuned,
to the wisdom pouring forth.
Sing aloud of gratitude, ask them to surround you,
knowing they are already present,
it is only your vision that must change to see.
Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
This is an adapted excerpt from my book The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk With Us Toward Holiness:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. —Hebrews 12:1
Most religious traditions—such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and many indigenous traditions—have some kind of teaching and practice of conscious relationship with ancestors.
When engaging with the ancestors, I believe along with the teaching of the Christian tradition that
- there is some kind of consciousness or awareness that continues beyond death in this world;
- we can be in relationship with the ancestors;
- not all of the dead are fully well (unlike the saints we explored, some ancestors will die in a state of deep unresolved trauma and wounding that is then passed down their generational line); and
- the dead can change and be affected by our actions, and the reverse is true as well.
St. Paul writes in his letter to the Hebrews about the great cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1–2). They are the ones who inspire us to endure through life’s challenges and find joy, cultivate love, and discover purpose to our days.
There are two main parts to this work. One is to connect with those ancestors who are wise and well and seek their support for our own lives. The second part of the work is to bring healing to the ancestors who are not fully well and working in various ways to bring healing to the family line.
Sandra Easter, a Jungian analyst and author of Jung and the Ancestors, describes the process this way: “Coming into a more conscious relationship with the ancestors is a home coming, a return to origins, to a way of knowing, seeing, and being in relationship with the world that has been and is part of our collective inheritance.” She says that this is what psychologist Carl Jung would have described as “archaic” knowing, drawing on our ancient roots from those for whom connecting to the ancestors would have been a natural and expected part of daily living.
In her book This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley writes, “I believe in a spiritual realm that is so enmeshed with the physical that it is imperceptible. I believe in the mysterious nearness of my ancestors, but I believe they are located at the site of my own blood and bone.” The ancestors are already with us. Calling upon them simply opens our awareness to their presence. Prayer and ritual mean developing a relationship with them and listening for their wisdom in our lives.
Consider spending some time each morning opening your senses to all the ways you might experience a connection to your ancestors. Keep a journal by your bed and pay attention to your dreams. We may receive a message while we sleep or be offered a symbol to help connect to us. Notice the synchronicities of everyday life—those moments of meaningful coincidences—and keep track of them as well. We can easily dismiss a subtle moment of connection to a loved one who has passed on or to the wider body of ancestors. If a song starts playing, you encounter a meaningful symbol, or someone says something to you that brings a sense of deeper knowing, start trusting these as moments of connection. The more we dismiss them, the fainter the connection becomes. The more we cultivate an honoring of these kinds of experiences, the more we notice them happening. Often when a synchronicity happens we will feel a kind of tingling sensation or chill and we will sense something magical or otherworldly is happening. When this happens, pause and receive. Notice when your mind wants to undermine what happened.
Spend significant time in nature and listen for the wisdom of trees and animals. I have often had experiences of encounter with each of my parents in creation. From coyotes to butterflies, cuckoo birds to rainbows, these moments gave me a sense of deep connection.
Theologian Patrick Reyes describes intuition as “the expression of guides and spirits. In many ways, the wisdom and spirit of my ancestors live in my very bones. The sum of my experiences, to borrow from [adrienne maree brown] makes up my intuition. . . . To cultivate your intuition, slow down.” He goes on to write about his grandmother who witnessed to this way of being for him: “It was in her ability to slow us down and draw on the deep ancestral wisdom she carried in her very body. Intuition is not another form of problem solving. It draws on the love that threads its way through generations.”
Ritual has a way of bridging the gap between the visible and invisible worlds and between the conscious and unconscious knowing. We can open ourselves to communication from our grandmothers and grandfathers. What we work on consciously through ritual and prayer has an impact in the world of the ancestors. Ritual is the intentional cultivation of relationship, but communication happens in spontaneous ways as well.
Engage the arts, movement, and poetry in service to this quest because they speak the intuitive language. We are not concerned with making beautiful things, only authentic expressions of the stirrings of the soul; in the process, beauty will emerge in its own form. We are calling upon the love that is our inheritance and makes itself available to us through intuitive connection to those who came before us. The arts are a way we can feel our way forward, tending to the unique shape of our ancestral wisdom.
The companion self-study retreat to this book is on sale this month for 20% off with coupon code LOTH20. It has recordings of weekly webinars with Christine along with meditations and guest teacher conversations each week and dance prayers from Betsey Beckman.
Our featured book this month for the Lift Every Voice prayer cycle is Ancestors: Those Who Bless Us, Curse Us, and Hold Us by Rev. William H. Lamar IV. It is a really beautiful and powerful book and Claudia Love Mair and I had a wonderful conversation with the author which you can watch or listen to here. In Ancestors, Bill reminds us that the ancestral guides we call upon help us to dream and sing our way into new realities:
“The ancestral guides we need were not maintenance persons. They were architects and builders. They imagined. They designed. They built. They composed songs that live in our bodies and spirits, which we have yet to sing.”
Cultivating Seeds of Liberation prayer cycle
Today we release the video podcasts for Day 6: Joy from the Cultivating Seeds of Liberation Prayer Cycle. Here is the opening prayer for morning written by Cassidhe Hart:
God our Mother, Host, and Friend, open our hearts to receive your invitation to the feast you have spread before us. Nourish us with the assurance that we belong at this table. When we walk through shadowed valleys, fill us with subversive joy and with the promise that oppression and brokenness do not have the last word. Meet us in our hunger for flourishing and connection.
Pray with the video podcasts for Day 6: Joy here.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
*Reflection and blessing are from The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk With Us Toward Holiness by Christine Valters Paintner (Ave Maria Press)
Image ©️Christine Valters Paintner
