Belonging and Sense of Place – Being in Right Relationship with Our Ancestors
I have been a field archaeologist digging up bone remains from the Bronze Age through to a Methodist burial site that went out of use a mere ninety years ago. The remains go into acid-free boxes, to be stored and eventually reinterred with appropriate rituals (if known – alas we cannot say that for our Bronze Age ancestors).
This awareness helps me to frame a deep discomfort: the Earth and the remains of our ancestors laid therein no longer hold the significance they once did. We no longer consider the Earth as a final resting place. Nor do we share a sense of belonging to a place because our ancestors’ bones lie there. We live in precarious times where burial is not forever.
Sadly, reinterment with appropriate rituals has not always happened in the recent past. I know of an example from the middle of the last Century where remains were removed from Quaker-owned land without the legal obligations and sensitivity that would be applied today. This feels to me (in my heart) to be so uncaring and lacking in some of the things that Quakers hold so precious: namely the qualities of community and trust. When the Friends were buried, there would have been the belief that they were being buried in safety and in a faith of simplicity in death.
In the months since finding out about the treatment of some historic burial sites, I have considered a lot about what all this means to today’s Quakers. It feels like an important thing for me to do now, to make a pilgrimage to the reinterment site of the Quaker remains that I have come to know about. I will offer a ritual of some sort, of interment and remembrance, in a Quakerly way. My own ritual might name again “community and trust”, bringing the ancestors back into the fold of Friendship.
In such difficult times as these, we as living descendants of those who went before can build right relationship again.
Harriet Sams