"Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plane and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch."

- Chief Seattle, Duwamish and Suquamish, 1854


"Our ancestors are our saints. Christian missionaries who came here wanted us to pray to their saints, their dead people. But what about our saints?... If you are grateful to your ancestors, then you have blessings from your grandmother, your grandfather, who brought you forth. If you neglect them because they are dead or call them evil people - non-Africans came in and said we should not obey our ancestors, should not call upon them at all, because they are evil people. This has been a mental bondage, a terrible thing."

- Rev. William Kingsley Opoku
organizer, African Council for Spiritual Churches


"The people lived in accordance with their original instructions, tempered and ordered by the natural world around them. Through ceremony, they aspired to a reciprocal relationship with this realm. Of special importance were the ancestors, who guided the living as they carried out their spirit journeys. Ancestors were among the forces that mediated between the living and the Creator. With bones under the Earth, and spirits on a star path, the ancestors are unseen, but known nonetheless....

"Remember, my uncle directs, when you pass into the spirit world, your ancestors will be waiting for you. They will ask you what you did to fulfill your responsibility to them, your responsibility to the original instructions...."

- Gabrielle Tayac, Piscataway


My name is Daniel Stephen Schatz. I am the son of Gerald Schatz and Nancy Green - now Gerald Schatz and Nancy King. My grandfather was Martin Schatz and my grandmother was born Ethel Kaplan. They were the children of George and Sarah Shevelenko Schatz, and Samuel and Bessie Bass Kapelyan. My great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants in Chicago - my grandmother's father was a lay spiritual leader of a progressive Jewish community. At Shabbat each week, they would welcome guests that my great-Aunt Ida would bring home from the University of Chicago, where she worked in the library. The guests might be from anywhere in the world - Ethiopian and Ashkenazic Jewish immigrants sharing meals together in the 1920s. 

My mother is the daughter of Sterling and Louise Green. Her father was a White House reporter for the Associated Press and her mother was a staffer for Vice President Hubert Humphrey and for several Democratic Senators. They met while students at the University of Oregon. My grandfather was born in Canada, but traced his ancestry to England, Ireland and Holland. My grandmother's grandmother was Sophia Moses, a German Jew who married August Straube - a Catholic - and emigrated with him to the United States.

These are my ancestors. Their stories are part of who I am, and they continue to be part of my life, though only one grandparent remains living and I never knew my great-grandparents. Parts of them live on in me and in my generation - their sense of religious tolerance, their social values, their sense of humor, their love of words. Their lives have become part of my own, not merely through the retelling of stories - to be honest we don't tell the stories all that often in my family - but also through the impact their living has had upon mine. 

Who are your ancestors? Who are the grandmothers and grandfathers of your body and spirit? 

I can't think of a part of the world in which the people do not in some way honor their ancestors. Through telling stories, building monuments, holding on to heirlooms, or seeking spiritual connections with our dead, we remember, listen to and learn from those who have come before.

For some, ancestors are more than collections of genetic traits and personal habits passed from an earlier generation. Whether they are seen as guides, spirits, or simply those whose existence has become one with a place itself, they are entitled to respect. Many native Americans tell us that the land their ancestors walked is sacred land - that their history and their religion has been written by the memories they created.

In Japan the ancestors of the living might eventually come to be regarded as the kami, or spirits of a place. William Kingsley Opoku compares ancestors in Africa to the European saints. The scholar Mary Pat Fisher describes this well: "Traditional Africans understand that a person is not an individual, but a composite of many souls - the spirits of one's parents and ancestors - resonating to their feelings." 

In America Chief Seattle taught that the ancestors never ceased loving "the beautiful world that gave them being." "[They] ever yearn," he said, "in tender, fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the Great Beyond to visit, guide, console, and comfort them." Indeed the ancestors and elder generations are so revered in many Algonquin nations that the words "grandfather" or "grandmother" have themselves become terms of deep and abiding respect. Even the most important spirits may be called "Grandmother Moon" or "Grandfather Sun."

Whether or not we believe that our ancestors literally exist in a conscious spirit today is less important than that we remember to honor them in the first place. Even if we do not know their names, most of us know something about our ancestors, or perhaps have some people who were not related to us by any blood but whose life stories helped to make us the people we are. 

This weekend I attended the Annual Meeting of the Joseph Priestley District of Unitarian Universalist - a District named after one an ancestor of our religion. The meeting was held near Washington, DC - a city as in love with its ancestors as any I can think of. Streets are named after Presidents, huge memorials define the landscape, statues can be found at every turn. I drove home through Baltimore - a city named for its ancestors - up into Pennsylvania - a state named after William Penn. Even in the most modern society in the world, we remember our ancestors with reverence.

There is a less useful side to honoring ancestors. While we each have reason to think with pride on the accomplishments of our ancestors - or remember with tenderness their sufferings or their wrongs - we do ourselves a disservice when we start to assume that our ancestors are better than any others - that, for example, a King is a better ancestor than a slave, or vice-versa.

My father was once involved in a conversation with a number of men who were talking about their exalted ancestry. "I'm descended from Robert the Bruce," said one. "I'm descended from Richard the Third," said another. "Jerry, who are you descended from?" My father simply told them, "Well, we know we can trace it back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but after that it gets a little bit muddy."

The point is not how far back we can trace our lineage or whether are ancestors did great things in their lives or terrible. The point is that they are our history; their lives are intertwined through time with our own. They have lessons to teach us. Their destiny is not ours; we are not bound by their choices. Yet, though centuries may separate them from us, they have touched us with their living. It is not a matter for pride or shame; it is simply a condition of our existence.

One of the most poignant poems I have ever read comes from Wendell Berry, who writes about his great-grandfather's slaves. 

I see them obeying and watching 
the bearded tall man whose voice
and blood are mine, whose countenance 
in stone at his grave my own resembles,
whose blindness is my brand....

I am owned by the blood of all of them
who ever were owned by my blood....

The realities of the past have long and lasting impacts. Though the ancestors of my blood came to this country after the Civil War - never owned or would have owned slaves, as far as I can tell - some of the ancestors of my spirit were here and did. If I honor the spirit of that great but flawed Unitarian, Thomas Jefferson, I must also acknowledge the evil that he did - even as he knew that it was wrong. That, too, has become part of my story as an American and as a Unitarian Universalist.

Yet we need not limit the remembering of our ancestors to those whose genes or religion or hometown we share. Any of the old ones - any who lived before and whose lives had a deep impact on our own - may become our ancestors. If Thomas Jefferson is my ancestor, then so too is Frederick Douglas. So too is Woody Guthrie. So too is Ella Baker. So too is Mahatma Gandhi. These are the ancestors of our spirits, our chosen dead - our adopted grandmothers and grandfathers.

Have you ever seen the Gilbert and Sullivan Opera "The Pirates of Penzance?" Ravaged with guilt after lying to the pirates in order to save his daughters, the Major General spends days moping in the chapel of his estate. "I come here" he wails, "to humble myself before the tombs of my ancestors, and to implore their pardon for having brought dishonour on the family escutcheon."

"But," says Frederic, the hero, "you forget, sir, you only bought the property a year ago, and the stucco on your baronial castle is scarcely dry."

"Frederic, in this chapel are ancestors: you cannot deny that. With the estate, I bought the chapel and its contents. I don't know whose ancestors they were, but I know whose ancestors they are, and I shudder to think that their descendant by purchase (if I may so describe myself) should have brought disgrace upon what, I have no doubt, was an unstained escutcheon."

Some our ancestors aren't that far from the Major General's - they came to us almost through an accident, influenced our lives without our even noticing very much. Others we choose, and for different reasons. They might be heroes or heroines whose lives provided to us examples - whose models we determined to emulate. Or they may have influenced our thought in some way, our worldview, or our technique in some art or discipline. Still others may be the ancestors of these ancestors - their names lost to us and their impact on our lives concealed, even as it is profound.

Sometimes the choice is more conscious than others. The Unitarian Universalist minister Alice Blair Wesley once said that "Joining a church is adopting a new set of ancestors." When we became Unitarian Universalists - whether that happened in childhood or our adult years - we adopted a set of ancestors and forbears. People like King Sigismund of Transylvania, Michael Servetus of Spain, Olympia Brown, Joseph Priestley, Judith Sargent Murray became influences in our lives - even for those of us who do not remember what they did or perhaps have not even heard their names. Their stories helped to shape Unitarian Universalism and today we live the continuation of that story. Here at BuxMont we share our own set of ancestors. I remember and honor names like Herschel Lee and Ed Schempp, even though I never knew them. Some of you did, and you know the difference they made in all of our lives through their membership at BuxMont.

Honoring ancestors connects us not only with our families, traditions and histories, but also with times past and times future. It marks our place in the larger scheme of life. It reminds us that we, too, will one be ancestors. Our presence, too, will be felt long past our time in this place or in this life. Whether our contributions to the world are celebrated in legend or become forgotten with the passing of the centuries, they are no less real and no less important. We are the ancestors whose breath is now shaping the lives of those who will follow us. If we have no other life's work, we still bear a responsibility to be good ancestors for those who will come after us.

In Algonquin traditions, decisions are made with regard not only for the people present, but also for the seventh generation ahead. Oren Lyons, the Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, explained it this way: "When we walk upon Mother Earth we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them."

What would our decisions look like if we made them for the seventh generation ahead? What would our world come to be if all our choices were made with the understanding that no one generation can act only for its own interests? Instead, we would remember not just our children, but their children and their children and all the children to come. We would fulfill our responsibility to be good ancestors in the ways that we chose to shape the world, and because of those kinds of choices and that kind of living our memories too, would be honored. We too, would be guides for our great-great grandchildren, because we had chosen to become living examples of human goodness.

If that sounds very serious, it is - but it need not make our living heavy or somber. We plant our feet carefully, yes, but also lightly, with a sense of humor and an appreciation of our foibles as well as our virtues. No ancestor is perfect in life - only in legend. Our calling is not to live perfectly - only to live responsibly. If we do this, it will be enough, and then we will be ancestors worthy of honor - for all the generations to come.

I am Daniel Stephen Schatz. One day, perhaps, I will be remembered as a grandfather or great-grandfather - whether of blood, or spirit or both I do not yet know. But I will choose to live my life in a way that honors not only the memory of those who came before me, but also the hopes of those who may one day follow.

We are the members and friends of the BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. How will we honor our ancestors? How will we live for the generations to come? What choices will we make - in our families, in our jobs, in our communities, and here in this gathering - to honor the hopes and the possibilities of those who will follow us? What kind of ancestors will we choose to be? When memory meets hope and honor meets integrity, then we will have chosen our way.

Because of those who came before, we are;
in spite of their failings,
we believe;
because, and in spite of
the horizons of their vision,
we, too, dream.

Let us go remembering to praise,
to live in the moment,
to love mightily,
to bow to the mystery.

- Barbara Pescan