Once, when my family and I lived in Colorado, we experienced a huge snowstorm, a blizzard really. For days the news told us the storm that was coming would be one to reckon with, so I went to the grocery store to stock up on supplies. Prudent, right?
Ha. You would think.
(Pssst, here’s where the story gets a little embarrassing.)
Can I tell you what I bought? Magazines. Magazines, some chips, some snacks, some wine, and very little, well, food. I know! I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. I mean, clearly I was NOT thinking, but … let’s move past this, shall we?
Anyway, three days into our lockdown beneath the winter blanket that covered EVERYTHING around us, I actually started getting concerned. Food was low and roads were closed. Sidewalks were closed.
I looked hopefully in my empty cupboards and did my best to quiet my panic, so I called my mom so that she could worry with me too! Soon after, my aunt Micki from Texas called to check up on us. My mom had clearly told her about my useless purchases, so she called me with some encouragement.
“Baby,” she said. “As long as you have flour and fat, you’re gonna be okay.” At the time, it made no sense to me, her advice. In fact, it wasn’t until just this past year (over 15 years later) when she and I were discussing our ancestor Sarah Elizabeth Ross, her grandmother, that the wisdom of her advice revealed itself to me.
My super smart Aunt Micki and me!
My aunt Micki told me about a time when she and her young siblings were hungry and they asked sweet Sarah to make them something to eat.
“All she had was some flour, some grease, and an onion. And don’t you know what? Those were the best dumplings we ever did eat.”
Flour. Fat. Provision.
My Great Grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Ross. Genius.
How is that for ancestral wisdom? I take courage knowing Sarah’s creativity, innovation, and magic lives in me too! Now … I just need to use it!
So Gideon said to Him, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, then show me a sign that it is You who speak with me.”
Judges 6:17
After my father transitioned, my siblings and I had just one day to clear out his personal belongings. Before he passed, my father and mother lived together in assisted living, and, due to COVID restrictions, we were only permitted one day to help my mother with what was an impossible task.
Beneath oppressive sadness, my brother, sister, and I did our best to sort through my father’s things. He was a nice dresser, so many of his clothes went to charity. He was a prolific reader of spiritual texts, so many books were donated to various nearby churches. He was an avid student of the Bible, so there were drawers full of yellow legal pads turned blue by the ink of his pens. He was also a bit of a pack rat, so it was unsurprising to find matchbooks inscribed with the logos of now-defunct restaurants or church bulletins dating back to the 80s. We sorted and discarded, packed and boxed, at a furious pace trying to use as much discernment as our limited time allowed.
Unfair. It felt unfair to be unable to pore over each item and to spend time appreciating that, no matter what it was, it was important to my dad at one time in his life. Mistakes in judgment were made.
One thing in particular that I regretted discarding was a stack of “Love Is” comics that my dad had paper-clipped together and tucked into the corner of his office drawer. There must have been thirty of them … little rectangles, yellowed with age and corners bent by carelessness. When I saw them, I heard myself say that they were precious and that I should keep them. Those tiny pieces of history were like breadcrumbs leading me back to childhood mornings at the breakfast table with my dad. I ate cereal and watched cartoons while he read the LA Times, cover to cover, giving the comics page the same importance as the front page. I’m not sure why he enjoyed the “Love Is” comics so much, but I love that as busy as he was raising three kids, working full time, managing the apartments that we owned, and trying to be a good husband, he took notice of a small pleasure, a simple sweetness, a profound truth that Love Is.
Yeah, I should have tossed that small family treasure into my purse, but my practical self got in the way and I tossed them in the trash along with salt and pepper packets from God knows where instead.
Even though it didn’t take long for me to regret that decision, it was still too late. The comics were gone. Just like my dad.
I relayed the story above to my youngest son and his girlfriend over a recent Sunday dinner. I expressed my regret and allowed myself to feel the resulting sadness. But, can I tell you something … something that’s, well, magical?
When I went to collect our mail the very next day, I received a card from my Aunt Bobbie, my father’s sister. It was an anniversary card, as my husband and I had just celebrated our 34th year of marriage together. Do you know what she included in the card? Four “Love Is” comics. Yes. You read that correctly. In her card she included the very comics my father used to collect.
Magical.
I share this with you to encourage you. Ancestors hear. Ancestors move. Ancestors act on your behalf when you ask them to, when you express your love and appreciation, when you respectfully come to them with a request.
The moment those four little scraps of paper fell from the card to my countertop, I just knew, beyond a doubt, that the spirit of my father had everything to do with it.
Keep the faith. Maintain your spiritual practice. Trust that your Ancestors and the Universe see, hear, and respond. Pray that you have the heart, ears, and eyes to recognize it.
Asé
P.S. Those four little comics are tucked safely away in my drawer so I can read them as often as I’d like.
Today my husband, Marc, and I celebrate 34 years of marriage. The miracle? Our imperfect love is still here, relevant, affecting, reciprocal, and alive with all of the needs and desires that any living thing has.
God bless the day.
Marc and I were married at the ages of 18 and 17, respectively. (I wasn’t lying when I said “miracle”.) Like any marriage, it hasn’t always been easy, a comfort, or something we even wanted to continue. And yet, here we are, lo these many years later, grateful for that very statement of fact.
Our first date, Disneyland, grade 6.
Here we are. Here we are. Here we are.
This morning during my devotions, I drew the Strength card. So fitting on a day like today when I contemplate one of the most important decisions of my life. Strength. How is any healthy, authentic, dynamic relationship sustained without the presence of Strength? Marriage — the Divine containment between the sacred and the mundane, spirit and flesh, heaven and earth, in a constant dance with each other. It takes incredible resolve and faith to hold polarizing energies as one.
I’m glad that Marc and I have found our rhythm — our one-two-three, one-two-three waltz on our very own dance floor. My gratitude extends to all of you, our friends and family, who have joined in the dance … and especially to our children.
Good lord, the love here. Me, Cole, Marc, Ryan, and That Girl, Tara.
This morning as we reflected on our lives together, I began to cry when I considered the fruit of our union. When I think of our sons and grandsons and how, together, we have loved, nurtured, and empowered them, I cry. When I consider the support we’ve, collectively, been able to extend to our parents, I cry. When I remember all of those who have poured love and time, prayers and wisdom into our shared cup in the hopes of our now and future selves, I cry. When I think of my ancestors and what their lives mean to mine, to ours, today, I cry.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 Two are better than one because they have a more satisfying return for their labor; for if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and does not have another to lift him up.
I am made better because of this union between Marc, myself, and Spirit, and when I am made better so are the worlds in which I am a part. Connected. We are all so beautifully connected to the decisions of our ancestors in the past and the lives of those in our lineage who are yet to come.
I don’t take this love for granted. Everyday is a choice, and I never want either of us to consent to being here for any other reason than we choose to be.
Today, we’re saying yes. Today is the one we have. Praise be.
To all the Black and Brown folks, to the Indigenous Peoples, to the marginalized and overlooked, to those whose struggles are unseen, to you, my brother, my sister, who have reached deep into the wells of strength, courage, and hope you did not know you even had: I see you, I love you, and your ancestors see and love you too.
Isaiah 61:1-3
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord or the display of his splendor.
My grandmother, Willie. A really sassy cutie.
My grandmother, Willie, had a saying she reminded me of whenever I was in a pickle. She said, “Baby, you got to take what you got and make what you want.” To me, it’s a folksy way of saying when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It’s also a translation of the Divine promise of God, the beauty-for-ashes exchange.
I’m so proud of how many of us have risen above the challenges we’ve faced this year. Collectively, we have marched against racial injustice; we have rallied our hopes in the face of great despair; we have reached across airwaves to support one another in grief, certainly, but also in celebration. We have made our voices heard, we have made our votes count, and our dreams have been made manifest under the most difficult of circumstances.
Some of us, like me, have harkened back to the beginnings of our faiths, with our hands in the dirt, eyes to the stars, dancing wildly among the trees, like our great-great-great-grandmothers and grandfathers before us. We’ve called upon ancient ones and have made our way back to what was originally ours to find power and solace there. We have, indeed, remembered the faith of our Fathers.
It’s what we do. It’s who we are. It’s who our ancestors were before us. It’s our destiny realized, more and more each day.
As we close out this most exceptional year, let’s take the time to remember it in its entirety, and let’s give thanks for how we have persevered in spite of it and for how we have given honor to our ancestors and the dreams they had for us.
Take what you got, make what you want.
I don’t know about you, but I want a better world for myself and my family, for you and your family, for all of us. Let’s create it together–for our children, and our children’s children, so that when we are ancestors, we will be remembered with love and admiration.
May whatever Gods we honor bless you and yours in the New Year to come. I love you.
I began building my ancestral altar in July 2020. My father passed away that June and I wanted to create a place where I could commune with him, his presence, and his memory. Piece by piece, picture by picture, element by element, my altar slowly came together. A white tablecloth from Etsy here, old family photos there, personal effects everywhere, and, of course, the Bible my father gave me in 1984 when I was just 15. He inscribed it: “Be strong in the Lord and the power of His might.”
I’m so grateful that I honored my impulse to create an altar. I have found tending to it cultivates peace within me and it gives my grief somewhere to go. I pour my ancestors morning coffee and give them dinner at night. I refresh their water daily and read scriptures from the Psalms. I spend precious time talking with them, and listening … always listening.
My ancestral altar has created a gratifying ritual for me. I want to believe that my ancestors, too, enjoy my presence, my devotion, my prayers, and my remembrance.
One of the last things my father said to me during his transition was “remember”. He repeated that word, that admonition several times. Remember.
I do. I will. It’s my joy to.
I remember you, Dad, and all of my ancestors who lived and loved so that I might do the same.
