Choose your ancestors
Feb. 19th, 2021 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormThursdays are pagan happy hour (happy hour is what you call a casual meeting of Dinonysos cultists I guess?). I drop into many of these - I really like the group, they are able to work with nature as it is and not only as a metaphor - and they are usually free-form. Tonight's was specifically about working with ancestors.
I don't consider myself to do any spiritual work around ancestors since my cosmology doesn't really... care ...about individual humans much. People are just not my focus. But when I hold seeds in my hand, or when I see my geese in the barnyard or a new batch of piglets born, I understand myself to be touching something shaped by the decisions and necessities of so many generations of people stretching back and back and back into the mist. I understand that strand to go both back into prehistory and hopefully forward into the people who will need this biodiversity, these genetic resources, these gifts.
And the discussion tonight got me thinking: I don't bargain with ancestors or make deals with them. But I do feel I owe my human ancestors reciprocity: they gave so much to put these in my hands and in turn I owe them the work of ensuring they continue.
I'm in the north. We have cool, short seasons shared with much of Russia. Varieties collected by Vavilov, who was killed for his work, survived the seige of Leningrad guarded by botanists who died of starvation rather than eat the seed grain and the seed potatoes. Those varieties went on to be bred into the plants I grow, or in some cases they are the plants I grow.
When it comes down to it, in every way, growing things is my spiritual work.
I don't consider myself to do any spiritual work around ancestors since my cosmology doesn't really... care ...about individual humans much. People are just not my focus. But when I hold seeds in my hand, or when I see my geese in the barnyard or a new batch of piglets born, I understand myself to be touching something shaped by the decisions and necessities of so many generations of people stretching back and back and back into the mist. I understand that strand to go both back into prehistory and hopefully forward into the people who will need this biodiversity, these genetic resources, these gifts.
And the discussion tonight got me thinking: I don't bargain with ancestors or make deals with them. But I do feel I owe my human ancestors reciprocity: they gave so much to put these in my hands and in turn I owe them the work of ensuring they continue.
I'm in the north. We have cool, short seasons shared with much of Russia. Varieties collected by Vavilov, who was killed for his work, survived the seige of Leningrad guarded by botanists who died of starvation rather than eat the seed grain and the seed potatoes. Those varieties went on to be bred into the plants I grow, or in some cases they are the plants I grow.
When it comes down to it, in every way, growing things is my spiritual work.
