Honoring Ancestors
This is the time of year when we speak of honoring ancestors.....and it occurred to me quite recently that it would do us well to keep in mind that we are the ancestors of generations yet to come. And if you subscribe to the idea that I do, that all time happens at the same time, it in not linear, and it works more like this temporal multiverse with lines criss crossing and meandering all over the place, well.......then we may just be the ancestors currently.......and let's keep it simple.
It seems to me that each generation is focused on the we now and the past then. And this is important. IT matters. It is what laid our paths down and what provided the stories and the guidance through which we traverse this life. And it is short sighted for us to not also take into consideration, our contributions to the stories.
Stories are alive. As Sean Donogue has taught me, so is breath. And as each story is retold, it is shaped a certain way, and maybe changed every so slightly so that it is breathed new life into it, and that life becomes part of it. I picture that every story is this wispy smokey thing flowing in and out and wandering here and there, and if you look really closely, you can see all of the many souls that are flowing along with it. Maybe we dont' know their names, and maybe that is or isn't important. (I mean, a. name is a name right?).......what I feel is important is that we continue to share these stories and breathe ourselves into them.......and to make up new stories of our own.
October 30 through November 2 are days when the stories really come alive for me. I think about stories my father shared, just whimsical little things that he invented to entrain his children......and then the stories of what happened when he was young and he was 10 and he took a trip to Yellowstone and what did he see there and how did it feel to him.........these come up and I tell them to my children in my own way because I think it is important. I think this is how we keep these things and people and memories alive. We remember their stories and then we share them......otherwise they come to an end with us. I suppose some stories are meant to, while others are not. And all stories add to the great big mix of this chaotic and awkward and quite beautiful thing we call life.
What is a story you carry with you that carries the breath of others in it's swirly mist?