Rising to wakefulness the first thing I notice, my breath—a graceful greeting with expansive ancestor Air.

Grateful. Feeling the weight of my own body draping the bed; the dog crowding my feet, the cat sinking claws into my chest. I lie here, a pulsation of beloved Earth, another timeless ancestor as my cells blink in and out of this existence.

Grateful. I swallow, thin morning spit; the liquid orbs of my eyes adjusting to wakefulness, thankful to abundant ancestor Water as I wait for the coming Sun, a mingling with another ancient ancestor, Fire.

Grateful, grateful. All always with me, AS me, whoever that might be, lending my spirit a home for a skinny minute.

And whose eyes look out with me on the now-illuminated world of color and birdsong this morning? My grandmother Dorothy, whose brilliance and ambitions never found their just fruition? My Sami forbears still dreaming and running with their Reindeer herd? My mafioso immigrant family with the weight of survival crafting their cunning minds? My Mongol warriors with their passionate love of horses and spirit flight? My Roma Travelers, seeding far lands with their voluptuous magic? Or my Irish wanderers, cut off from their ancient, deep connection to the living music and poetry of land and bringing pain in their path?

And who else? What are their voices? How are they expressed through the lineaments of my own holy desires, longings, biomass, fears, strengths, talents, errors, dreams, blindspots, loves, and life journey as the continual song of my own dying?

And what do they bring through me, through my blood and bone; through my blind inheritance of passed-along beliefs and behaviors? Through our soul cords, covenants, tensions, and affinities? And how do they affect the land I live on and this Earth’s other inhabitants, when these dead relations are settled or when they’re uneasy? How do they interact through/as me with the elements and animals, and with/as the cultural zeitgeist?

And what about yours?

Who among your dead are with you still? And how? Do you know? How do their gifts flow through you, as they are many? What are their needs and what is your personal and our collective responsibility, for they are intertwined and barely distinguishable? And how do we become allies with Death and greet that Great Being with respectful curiosity as well as tender inclusion? How do we create and maintain good rituals with true emotional resonance for relating lovingly to the life of this Earth and to our dead? How do we refine the helpful qualities passed on to us through our lineages yet also perceive and initiate/allow healing for ancestral pain throughout our lines as we also are transformed ourselves? And how do we open to the great ancestral as well as current grief that so often blocks our way with all of this and learn to walk in Beauty and Joy with this profound inheritance?

And that’s just with our human kin.

I’m just noodling since it’s still early morning. Kingfishers are becoming riotous down at the pond and I want to join in. Their calls clatter down the bones of my spine. The heat will fall heavier soon and there are tasks to be done, wonders to be seen….