The eastern side of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is what I consider my ancestral home with my great grandparents having settled here from St. Jean de Matha, Quebec. This land, which includes the Dryberg, Rudyard, and Sault Ste. Marie areas is like a hometown I never truly lived in but have a deep feeling within me. It is ancestral land. It holds the stories of generations and would be a part of what would sustain my parents through their life of joys and sorrows, grief and loss, pleasure, and pain. This land holds the blood, sweat, and tears of generations of ancestors. It holds our family stories, mystery, and myths. It holds a language that touches my soul with the love of generations grounding me in place.
Honoring ancestors blended in soil, mystery and memory tell of their toil. Feeling recognition of self in their tale, handed down, entwined in earth to prevail. Language foreign to mine yet known in my heart, they came living and tending the slow burning hearth. From a Huron orphan and fir trapper the journey flows true, farmers, loggers, factory work too. From Quebec, Ontario, then to the Soo They, dreaming of me now I, reflecting on them, a great chain of being flows on into then. Flowing on in the children Courage, determination, faith, hope, losses grieved, finding peace deep within.
“No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The “I” is chained to ancestry by many factors… This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.”
Erwin Schrödinger
“The songs of our ancestors are also the songs of our children”
Philip Carr-Gomm
“It was the kind of moon that I would want to send back to my ancestors and gift to my descendants so they know that I too, have been bruised…by beauty.”
Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence
Ongoing Resource List: Reading for Mind and Heart
- The Gene Keys: Emracing Your Higher Purpose by Riuchard Rudd
- Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Inform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
- A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
- Energy Speaks: Messages from Spirit on Living, Loving, and Awakening by Lee Harris
- Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create an New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza
- The Women by Kristin Hannah
- Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme
- The Mastery of Love, Don Miguel Ruiz
- Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
- God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, by Mirabai Starr
- The Four Agreements: A Toltec Book of Wisdom by Don Miguel Ruiz
- Mindfulness and Grief by Heather Stang
- How We Live Is How We Die by Pema Chödron
- The Bhagavad Gita, Translated by Eknath Easwaran
- St Francis of Assisi: Brother of Creation by Mirabai Starr
- Wild Wisdom Edited by Neil Douglas-Klotz
- Earth Prayers From Around The World, Ed by Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon
- The Tao of Relationships by Ray Grigg
- Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue
- Unconditional Love and Forgiveness by Edith R. Stauffer, Ph.D.
- Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph M. Marshall III
- Art & Fear by David Bayless & Ted Orland
- Quantum-Touch by Richard Gordon
- The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Persons Path Through Depression by Eric Maisel, PhD
- The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
- Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris
- Forever Ours: Real Stories of Immortality and Living by Janis Amatuzio
- Personal Power Through Awareness by Sanaya Roman
- Violence & Compassion by His Holiness the Dahlai Lama
- Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Devotions by Mary Oliver
- To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue
- Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison
- The House of Belonging: poems by David Whyte
- Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
- The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
- Soul an Archaeology Edited by Phil Cousineau
- A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield
- Listening Point by Sigurd Olson
- I Sit Listening to the Wind by Judith Duerk
- Dancing Moons by Nancy Wood
- The Soul of Rumi, Translations by Coleman Barks
- Keep Going by Joseph M. Marshall III
- Arriving at your own Door by Jon Kabat-Zinn
- The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
- The Hidden Secrets of Water by Paolo Consigli
- Conquest of Mind by Eknath Easwaran
- Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
- Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
- I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) by Brene Brown
- Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chodron
- When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
- On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
- Unattended Sorrow by Stephen Levine
- Joy in Loving, Mother Theresa
- The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
- Let Your LIfe Speak by Parker Palmer
- Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh
- The Essence of the Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran
- Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chodron
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through The Ways Of Animals by Jamie Sams and David Carson