a poem comes to me, it comes circuitously… written as a ritual celebrating cosmos creation, it seems perfect for this all souls day of honoring the ancestors, sending them back into the night sea to watch us as we  emerge and see… sounding and re-sounding the words, we breathing in life and breathing out life in a seamless circle… birth to death to birth to death as one organic whole… join me in bowing to and flowing in beauty…

Ancestor Prayer

When you were born,
The earth became your body,
The stone became your bone,
The sea became your blood,
The sun became your eye,
The moon became your mind,
The wind became your breath.
When you passed to the Otherworld,
Your breath became the wind,
Your mind became the moon,
Your eye became the sun,
Your blood became the sea,
Your bone became the stone,
Your body became the earth.
When we were born, you did the same for us:
You called forth the earth and rocks;
The sea arose and the sun descended;
The moon shone down and the winds sang.
For those who come after, we shall do as you did for us
When we are gone, we shall do as you did before.
Ancestors, we honour you.

Rev. Michael J Dangler