Have you ever thought much about your distant past? Your ancestors? Their lives? What they have passed on to you? I know that is not part of what I was taught growing up. I saw a few faded photos of great-grandparents, heard a tidbit or two from an uncle who had done some research into the family tree, and that was about all.
Since then, I have learned that in many cultures, down to the present, ancestors are a very important part of people's religion and spirituality.
A well known Buddhist monk writes that the first thing he does when he comes home after a trip is to go to his home altar, where there are pictures and symbols of his ancestors, and greet them. In China, in Africa, and many other places, ancestors are considered to be alive and important to relate to properly on a regular basis. They are simply in "another dimension" (whatever it might be called) but certainly not absent from the lives of their descendants.
I have gotten a better personal feel for "the ancestors" in my time out here in the Sedona area. This is an ancient land, and there are many places where the remnants of the ancient peoples who once lived here can be seen. There are scholars who agree that this is a place the ancestors of the Hopi people once lived. They left behind them ruins of their dwellings, rock art picturing what was important to them, shards of pottery, arrow heads, and such. They also left behind them the imprint of their spirits. It it is possible to feel their presence in certain places, like the one I visited yesterday, called Palatki.
I am not the only one who is deeply moved by the spirit I feel in the places they once lived in this area. The forest ranger who welcomed me to Palatki clearly felt what I felt as we shared our experience of the place. There is a very deep peace, a stillness that speaks to the soul, and a sense of mystery that defies words. As I was approaching one of the ruins of a house built against a cliff (pictured above) I felt an inexplicable sense of grief, and tears came to my eyes. Then I got a vivid picture in my mind of an old Hopi woman sitting in the door of the house-ruins at which I was looking. She was weeping, watching her people leaving to migrate northwards because of a prolonged drought in the area. She knew she would never see her loved ones again. And she also knew it was her sacred duty to stay behind and care for the land as she had all her life, doing what she could to tend and gather medicine plants, do sacred ceremony to honor the spirits of the land, and pray for rain and people to return.
I do not know how or why this vivid "memory" came to me, but it had a strong impact.
Maybe I have been in Sedona too long. Stuff like this happens around here. But no. I love being here, and I am willing to live with whatever mystery I encounter without having to figure it out or explain it away. Suffice it to say that I feel a new kind of connection with the ancestors who lived in this area.
I remember reading that Chief Crazy Horse, of the Lakota people in South Dakota, who fought a losing battle against the white man's encroachments, once was scornfully asked by a white soldier, "Where is your land now?" He stretched out his arm and pointed to the horizon in all directions and said "Wherever my people are buried." Yes.
My experience (and that of many others) is that certain places carry the memory of the Ancient Ones very strongly. Sedona is one of those places.
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