Honoring the Ancestors

by Rev. Tamara Grenier

The morning of October 24th dawned sunny and unusually warm. I began preparing for the Ancestor Healing Ritual by gathering some of the last plants in the garden, a bit of lavender, crape myrtle flowers, sea grasses and lamb’s ears, and carefully laying out a simple Earth Mandala. A sacred circle that would embrace the altar. I placed within it a feather, stone, sea shell, candle, a dish of water, a quartz crystal, my grandmother’s cross, a carved stone from Italy, photos, an arrowhead….All the while offering prayers of honoring and gratitude.

“Thank you for the blessing of being here. For the path you forged. For the re-membering of the old ways, the deep cellular memories. For the interconnectedness of all beings.”

The prayer for the O.N.E. ritual was recited and a plate of food offered to the ancestor spirits. I then began to consecrate the space for the fire vigil that evening. Days earlier I had harvested the last of the Tulsi, drying the leaves and flowers and stripping them from their stalks, their bones. These stalks were laid as kindling along with fragrant cedar as the base of the sacred fire. The sweet scents would lift heavenward in the smoke, buoyed by drumbeats, chants and songs. A Lakota Ancestor Song, an Italian folksong, a hymn to the moon.

Layne Redmond shared in her book “When the Drummers Were Women” that all the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a 4- month-old fetus in the womb of her mother, meaning our cellular life as an egg began in the womb of our grandmother.

I invoke the plant spirits during the fire vigil that night…

”Tulsi-guide my soul to dance with the soul of my mother and grandmother, and the women before them who carried their eggs. Help me to bridge the gap between the seen and unseen worlds, the present and the ancients. Cedar support my longing to know those who walked this earth long before me. Not just my own lineage, but also the indigenous ancestors whose bones lie buried in these lands beneath me, and the ancestors of all the other beings who surround the wider circle of this fire; the stones, trees, grasses, plants, the birds, the deer, my goats and chickens, all the nature spirits who peer in as witnesses to this ritual.”

I sense their presence, their energy palpable in the shadows that lie just beyond the light cast by the flickering flames.