Which boat are you asking about:

--the one about the strong feeling?

--the one about the connection to the ancestors?

--the one about the characteristics of the ancestors to who you feel connected?

--the fact that you find one or some or any of these peculiar?

I think that the connection is to be taken for granted, and that feelings about the connection are irrelevant to the connection: our feelings about it just are what they are, and don't change anything one way or the other... except maybe for our responsiveness to that connection.

Likewise, the ancestors are the ancestors: can we really credibly suggest that we chose them or that they chose us? If we are all connected, all part of the One, then the connection is greater than the sum of its parts, is it not? So then, again, their characteristics are moot, no?

In fact, I would suggest that what is peculiar is the fact that you find all this to be peculiar at all: "peculiar" means particular, distinctive, idiosyncratic (literally, "private")--which is precisely *not* what our connectedness is. The connectedness is universal. What is peculiar, I submit, is the uniqueness of our place in the whole, as distinctive as our DNA. But our DNA, as personal as it is, is what binds us (binds us literally, in fact) commonly, as commonly as can be.

I wonder if it might not be true that what you find "peculiar" (could you, perhaps, mean "marvelous," too?) is not any one connection between you and any particular magick-maker, but the fact that the connections are there...

I am reminded of the lyrics to the splendid song "Holy Now" by Minnesota songwriter Peter Mayer:

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it

--Peter Mayer, "Holy Now"

I am also reminded of the meditation of the poet Birago Diop, who said,

Those who are dead are never gone:
They are in the shadow as it fades
And as it deepens.
The dead are not below the ground:
They are in the tree as it rustles
And in the forest as it groans,
They are in the water as it runs
And as it sleeps,
They are in the hideaway
And in the throng:
The dead
Are not dead.

Those who are dead are never far off;
They are in the nursing woman,
In the fussing baby,
In the glowing ember.

Never are the dead below ground; no,
They are in the dying flame,
They are in the rocks that mourn
And the grass that weeps;
They are in the forest
And the shelter:
The dead
Are not dead.

--"Breaths"
©2008 Khrysso Heart LeFey
after Birago Diop, "Souffles"

(This translation is my property. Please credit me if you quote it *anywhere*.)

Diop--and I--are definitely with you in *that* boat.

It is interesting to me that we usually speak of the "ancestors" as being dead, but you, as you describe the ancestors to whom you feel connected, refer repeatedly to those who are living, embodied, animate.

It strikes me as deeply appropriate to do so, for in the timeless realm from which the "dead" ancestors witness our doings in time... there is no time: from that point of view, the living and the dead are as one, for our embodiment in flesh is a mere blip in the vastness of infinity. That is, we are all the living, and we are all the dead.