Honoring the Ancestors

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

October 30, 2011

This is the time of year when Celtic earth-based tradition says the veil between the worlds is thin. Halloween is tomorrow. The Christian tradition puts All Saints and All Souls days right afterward. The Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead (I won’t offend you with my accent in Spanish) is held on these days too, but rituals to celebrate and talk to the dead go back maybe 3,000 years. Some people like it when the veil is thin because they want to feel close to people they love who have died, but people are also scared, so the tradition sprang up to dress up so you would be scary too, and then maybe you would scare them before they scared you.

We want to talk about and honor our families today, not just the families we are living with right now, but our mothers and fathers mothers and fathers, and their mothers and fathers, and theirs, on back. We honor the people who made us part of their family too, aunts and uncles, neighbors and friends, adoptive parents and guardians. This is a day to keep the good things they gave us and let go of things they gave us that might not be good for us.

It is in our families that we first learn some ways of being in the world. We learn that being smart is important, or being neat. We learn not to hit when we’re mad, not to take other people’s things, we learn to share. We learn how to deal with annoying little brothers and sisters and bossy big brothers and sisters. In some families we’re taught never to upset the adults, and in some we learn never even to disagree with them! In some families, arguing is seen as fun, and in other families you’re taught not to argue. We learn what our family thinks a good person is. Sometimes our parents disagree about that. I remember my dad had more thoughts about keeping the house clean than my mom did. “Look at these spider webs in the windows!” My dad said one day. “Those have to go!” “Donald,” my mother said, “Those webs are educational. The girls can watch spider babies being born!” One friend said she feels like a good person only when her closet it clean.

Lots of people in my family don’t think being comfortable is important. My great-grandfather had a mean rooster in the yard. It would get in fights with the children and scratch them. Finally one of the uncles who was a doctor made him get rid of it because he was tired of giving the kids stitches. When I would say to my mother “I have a headache,” she said “Don’t be silly, children don’t get headaches.”

Birthdays were celebrated lavishly, and Christmas was a big deal. We were told I love you a lot. Some families don’t say “I love you” very much but they’ll come pick you up at the airport or iron your clothes or pack you a lunch or fill your car up with gas. There are lots of ways of showing love.

It’s important to find out about your people. Some of you all were born into different families from the ones who are raising you, so you have lots of people to find out about. They are all part of you.

How do you honor the ancestors? By learning about them, by noticing the things they taught you.

Now I’m going to talk to the grown-ups for a moment. Think about your ancestors, your mothers parents, your father’s parents. You learned some things that are standing you in good stead, and some other things that aren’t helping at all. Sometimes you are still waiting for their blessing, and they aren’t capable of giving it. Time to stop waiting and bless yourself. This is a day to say “thank you, but I’m letting this go.”

How do we honor the ancestors, after how they have wounded us, after how we have disappointed them? Honoring your father and mother doesn’t mean agreeing with everything you were ever taught. It doesn’t mean never speaking up around them. It doesn’t mean obeying them as an adult. It means treating them with courtesy. It means re-collecting those things of value you were given. Thanking them for those things. Forgiving them their failings. Knowing who they are, who they were. Having compassion for how they got that way. Keeping in mind the hand they were dealt.

As soulful people, our task is to root ourselves in compassion and understanding. Return to the texts of our religion with our free minds and our faith that God is love, and re-understand. Return to the text of your childhood life, the life of your family, with your new free mind, with your compassionate heart and re-understand. Re-understanding is one of the adventures of a mind that has been freed to re-see, to re-evaluate.

Take one of the cookies you have and, into it, pour (in your imagination) all the good memories in your mind right now. Put into it the gratitude for the teachings you want to keep. Let’s eat these cookies together to experience taking these good things in.

May we touch these people who have gone before us now, as the veil is thin between the worlds. May we thank them for the things they have given to us. Some of those things are precious.

Now take the things you were taught that do not work for you, ways you do not want to carry on, and put them into the other cookie. Put into that cookie the things you want to let go of in this time of the year, things you want to now give back to spirits who, having passed on, may now see and understand everything from quite a different perspective. Is this true? We don’t know. Can it help us move on with our lives? It couldn’t hurt.

Some of the people who have gone on taught us things that were wrong, that were not helpful. We can begin to forgive them for this, we can begin to let go of the things that are no longer helpful. We can move from that place into a new place. On this day, look to the mystery of the season to release that which has been completed. Look at and acknowledge that which has come to an ending within your own life and bid it a final farewell, even though this may bring you pain, it must be done.