10/03/2026
Whereever you are, you stand atop the bodies of the dead. Your feet touch dirtāthat has built up over time through the decaying bodies of plants, insects, small beings and large, branches, stones worn down that are themselves the calcified bodies of lost oceans. Whether you are in a house with a basement, or standing in the penthouse of a skyscaper, it is the ancestors who are beneath you, bearing you up.
The whole earth is an ancestor altar and there is not one moment on any day that those in the shadowlands are not reaching out and speaking to us in the ten thousand lost languages of the natural world.
In my dining room is an ancestor altar with photos of long-gone relatives, dead friends and neighbors and pets, mementos of beings I never even knew when they were alive. Each morning I begin in conversation with them, placing each of my worries and cares in someoneās hands on the other side. Because of this relationship, my entire relationship to the living has transformed. Because, of course, the dead are always coming back to new bodies. I pray to my father and the oak tree lets fall in a flurry of leaves as I pass under it. I pray to a old friend and the goldfinch emerges from the forest. I pray to a forgotten saintāand an owl follows me on my walk, hooting and calling.
The whole earth is an ancestor altar and everything alive has died and come back ten thousand times ten thousand times. To live in these merciful circles of transformation and becoming is to know what it is to belong.
We are the dead to whom we pray.
Whereever you are, you stand atop the bodies of the dead. Your feet touch dirtāthat has built up over time through the decaying bodies of plants, insects, small beings and large, branches, stones worn down that are themselves the calcified bodies of lost oceans. Whether you are in a house with a basement, or standing in the penthouse of a skyscaper, it is the ancestors who are beneath you, bearing you up.
The whole earth is an ancestor altar and there is not one moment on any day that those in the shadowlands are not reaching out and speaking to us in the ten thousand lost languages of the natural world.
In my dining room is an ancestor altar with photos of long-gone relatives, dead friends and neighbors and pets, mementos of beings I never even knew when they were alive. Each morning I begin in conversation with them, placing each of my worries and cares in someoneās hands on the other side. Because of this relationship, my entire relationship to the living has transformed. Because, of course, the dead are always coming back to new bodies. I pray to my father and the oak tree lets fall in a flurry of leaves as I pass under it. I pray to a old friend and the goldfinch emerges from the forest. I pray to a forgotten saintāand an owl follows me on my walk, hooting and calling.
The whole earth is an ancestor altar and everything alive has died and come back ten thousand times ten thousand times. To live in these merciful circles of transformation and becoming is to know what it is to belong.
We are the dead to whom we pray.
The Way Back to Magic - perditafinn
