Offering to the Ancestors, The Happenings
Dear ancestors,
May we live our lives appreciating the gifts that your actions have given us. Our lives are echoes of your decisions.
May we hold your flaws and virtues, triumphs and errors, in equal light. Your search for truth, understanding, dignity, and comfort also came with confusion, judgment, injustice, and grave inequity. The learning, growing, questioning, and discovering our shared humanity is our real inheritance.
May we learn to cherish the presence of each other as we make this journey across this field of mortality. Our struggles, despair, loneliness, and longing can only be resolved in our trust in the wisdom that dwells in each other.
May we recognize the giving and forgiving of nature, and learn to see it within ourselves. Each season yields to the next and has its harvest and lean times, so must we accept the banquet of grief that comes with each new and passing celebration.
May we take pause to remember that our existence is a gift we must receive and honor in our actions. Praise or blame, selfishness, and arrogance cloud us from appreciating that our willing, our acting, and our knowing all arise and recede into the same universal and unlimited wellspring.
May we recognize that none earn the woes or sorrows more than joy or happiness, but that we all share in the responsibility of the well-being of each other. Just as each blade of grass, tree, or mountain belong to the same earth, we all belong to each other. None of us are more or less deserving of nourishment, clean air or water, and an easeful rest.
May we see the power and potential of our own hearts and uplift each other as we face the uncertainty and challenges of this changing world. The days and years ahead of us will stretch and test the mettle of our convictions, or ethics, and our discernment in ways that will show us the brightest and most virtuous parts of the human spirit.
May we live in trust, clarity, honesty, and integrity with ourselves and each other, and may we remember that there is a universal cosmic intelligence that moves through all things in ways we could never dream or Imagine (The Happenings).