Honoring my deep ancestors

Speculating on an ancient source of European anxiety.

When we were kids our paternal grandfather told my five brothers and me about our Irish background. I remember hoping I didn’t come from a place called Limerick because limericks were bawdy and silly and not as grandiose as I aspired. We were told that a forefather dropped the ‘O’ from “O’Lay” because it sounded too Irish in the 1850’s when the country was flooded with Irish immigrants.

Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s with five story-loving brothers, the Irish family origin myth expanded. We reasoned that our distant fathers lived along the Lee River in County Cork because we would be ‘of the Lee’ which is close to the name “O’Lay”.

When I was thirty years old I was privileged to live and work in Ireland for a year and was accepted by the Irish people pretty much as family. Having an ear for its music, my speech started sounding Irish. After leaving Ireland, for the next two years my accent persisted to the point that new acquaintances assumed I was Irish.

Ten years ago one of my brothers paid for DNA genetic testing. He scanned the results for the percent of Irish in our blood: 3%. Three percent! How could that be? Other brothers confirmed this utter disappointment with their own tests.

I consider it a bit of a cosmic Irish joke that I used to have Irish ancestry.

I wanted to be Irish, or to have famous ancestors like Abraham Lincoln or European royalty because ultimately I feel basically inadequate. I have found that those who can legitimately claim some royal ancestor feel inadequate as well, but for different reasons. Perhaps this feeling of inadequacy is a consequence of living while our industrial culture unravels. Global warming and the extinction of many many species are happening this second - and I’m not doing enough to stop it. The feeling of not being enough is as pervasive as gravity.

Intact indigenous cultures which are mythologically connected to their land have often preserved their lineages and maintained specific relationships with their ancestors and their ecosystems. Europe was once home to many indigenous peoples. As ecosystems on planet Earth unravel it’s natural for Europeans like me to search for times when we lived more in balance with other species.

In the 2000’s Joanna Macy led groups of us through practices around “Dwelling in Deep Time”. My mind opened to consider vaster time scales. Accordingly, let me call humans who lived long before history “deep ancestors” whether or not they are technically kin. What were these deep ancestors like?

I devised a thought experiment and invite you to join me.