ancestors

We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.

To me, the word wisdom means ancient knowledge. It__ the kind of knowledge you not only see but feel when you look into the eyes of an elephant or stop for a moment to marvel at the deep wrinkles on its skin, both of which I believe contain the truths learned from each intentional step their feet and those of their ancestors have placed upon the earth.

It__ important to honor your ancestors. Bringing in a piece of furniture or an object you__e inherited from a loved one not only honors the person who has passed but also brings the warmth of happy memories into your home.

We share a common ancestor with chimps that is not shared by mandrills, we share a common ancestor with mandrills that is not shared by bushbabies, and on and on and on, to the ancestor we share with nematode worms that is not shared with oak trees.

The Wishing BonesA thousand grandmothers ago Pyrrha and Deucalion repopulated the world with rocks, bones of mother Earth, a generation of my ancestors strained from the mud of a drowned planet.But I__ more interested in my earliest grandmothers, their gills and wetness,before they crawled from that blue expanseand learned to carry the sea within them,in their cells, between their cells, in their eyes.The buoyancy of ocean has never left us.It hides in skin__ complex reservoir where we're selectively permeable and our bodies exchange the smallest life.If we had no need to distinguish ourselves from others we__ be missing the skin that defines lovers and enemies and opens itself to both.

The secret to good health is to behave like your ancestors did before the Industrial Revolution.

Justice requires not only the ceasing and desisting of injustice but also requires either punishment or reparation for injuries and damages inflicted for prior wrongdoing. The essence of justice is the redistribution of gains earned through the perpetration of injustice. If restitution is not made and reparations not instituted to compensate for prior injustices, those injustices are in effect rewarded. And the benefits such rewards conferred on the perpetrators of injustice will continue to "draw interest," to be reinvested, and to be passed on to their children, who will use their inherited advantages to continue to exploit the children of the victims of the injustices of their ancestors. Consequently, injustice and inequality will be maintained across the generations as will their deleterious social, economic, and political outcomes.

Oftentimes, the most important decisions are the most difficult to make - for, your future, and the future of the generations that come after you, hinges on the outcome of those decisions.

I don__ think my journey has to be harrowing to be important. Simply doing the tasks of the day is enough. Such as getting up every morning to go to work to support my family and sacrificing personal time in service to others, teaching my children to give thanks for what they have and to care for others.

Turn that worthless lawn into a beautiful garden of food whose seeds are stories sown, whose foods are living origins. Grow a garden on the flat roof of your apartment building, raise bees on the roof of your garage, grow onions in the iris bed, plant fruit and nut trees that bear, don't plant 'ornamentals', and for God's sake don't complain about the ripe fruit staining your carpet and your driveway; rip out the carpet, trade food to someone who raises sheep for wool, learn to weave carpets that can be washed, tear out your driveway, plant the nine kinds of sacred berries of your ancestors, raise chickens and feed them from your garden, use your fruit in the grandest of ways, grow grapevines, make dolmas, wine, invite your fascist neighbors over to feast, get to know their ancestral grief that made them prefer a narrow mind, start gardening together, turn both your griefs into food; instead of converting them, convert their garage into a wine, root, honey, and cheese cellar--who knows, peace might break out, but if not you still have all that beautiful food to feed the rest and the sense of humor the Holy gave you to know you're not worthless because you can feed both the people and the Holy with your two little able fists.