All Saints- Our Ancestors

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations

Saturday, November 1, 2025

All Saints Day

Week Forty-Four Summary

October 26 – October 31, 2025

Connecting With Our Ancestors

Sunday

We all need to feel and know, at the cellular level, that we are not the first ones who have suffered, nor will we be the last. We are all partners with both the living and the dead, walking alongside countless ancestors and descendants who were wounded and longed for healing. —Richard Rohr

Monday

Christianity hides its ancestors in plain view. Those familiar with the Bible know that Jesus had a very public conversation with ancestors in full view of chosen disciples.

We choose safe words and images like prayer and transfiguration to soothe our discomfort with ancestor contacts that require the crossing of dimensions. —Barbara Holmes

Tuesday

It seems to me the victory over death is when somebody, because of the good he’s done for others, becomes part of future humanity, which will be resurrected. Even though your death is obscure and nobody remembers it, you stay alive in the consciousness of humanity. —Ernesto Cardenal

Wednesday

When we die, we don’t go anywhere, but rather, we cross over into unmediated, infinite union with God. We cross over into loving God, with God’s own love for God, which is the Holy Spirit.

—James Finley

Thursday

Inside the enclosure of the sweat lodge, the animals and ancestors move into the human body, into skin and blood. The land merges with us…. We who easily grow apart from the world are returned to the great store of life all around us, and there is the deepest sense of being at home here in this intimate kinship. —Linda Hogan

Friday

Living in the communion of saints means that we can take ourselves very seriously (we are part of a Great Whole) and not take ourselves too seriously at all (we are just a part of the Great Whole) at the very same time. —Richard Rohr

Week Forty-Four Practice

Ancestors, Past and Future

Potawatomi author Kaitlin Curtice looks at pictures of herself and considers her future role as an ancestor:

I realized then that one day I am going to be an ancestor.

When I have passed on and my spirit is left to lead my children and their children, they will talk about me, about my legacy, about what I left undone or what I did to change things.

I realized that these photos are an actual embodiment of sacred life…. So, I remember my ancestors. I remember what they have left for me, and I remember what was left undone. I look at their pictures, searching their eyes for stories they may never have told us when they were alive.

Instead, they visit us in dreams, reconnecting us, helping us imagine a new way forward, a way of peace. One day we will become ancestors, but until then, we whisper to our long-gone ones, asking that they remember us.

Passed On One, I see you there.

Not your skin and bones,

nor the frame that once held you.

I see your aura, your spirit, your essence.

I see the glow of who you once were

and who you are today.

I see, somehow, the imprint of what

you’ve left me here.

It’s not a thumbprint, but some other form

of spirit-code.

Somehow, the shape of you carves lines

into the essence of who I am.

Somehow, I am enough, because you were enough.

Ancestor, your name will always be

the sound of breath in my lungs.

Ancestor, your face will always look

like the face of my own children.

Ancestor, your essence will always feel like

the wind when it slips through the tree branches,

singing a song.

You, Dear One, lead me, still.

I feel the gifts you’ve left me

and I wonder how much more is waiting.

I learn my own way

as I reckon with your mistakes

and realize that you were human once,

like I am human now.

I wonder how much you notice

from the other side.

What does God feel like?

I’ll wait, and one day, you’ll show me.