When we think about our spiritual ancestors, we often select people we admire to include in that chosen family. Our spiritual ancestors might be theologians or organizers or community builders whose words and actions seem to embody those ideals we aspire to hold at the center of our own lives. We choose what we carry forward from them. It’s like choosing our own inheritance.
Some of our ancestors were more than one thing, though. Some of our ancestors were complex human beings, with features and behaviors that might challenge us. Especially with our propensity to cancel people these days, we might be tempted to cast out all of the problematic figures from our ancestry. If we do that, though, we’d likely have no ancestors left.
Rather than cancel or erase people who have problematic and complicated perspectives, we can decide what pieces of our inheritance we want to keep, and what we want to discard. We specifically did this on Sunday with the Puritans, whose culture fell short of the kind of expansive inclusivity we aspire to create. And yet, our religion wouldn’t exist today if the Puritans hadn’t made intentional choices toward mutual covenant rather than hierarchical power structures. So, we choose what piece of our inheritance we want to keep, and we release the rest.
We might still have to contend with some things. The history of Shaker Heights is a perfect example. We might love the community where our congregation calls home so much that we want to ignore some of the more painful exploitative and racist pieces of its history. But ignoring that something happened doesn’t heal it. Just like ignoring that someone broke a window doesn’t fix the window.
So, when we choose what to release from our inheritances, there might still be work to do in the process of releasing. We can release the part of our inheritance that tells us, We’re a people who throw rocks through windows. We can say, We no longer throw rocks through windows the way our ancestors did. We can even demonstrate that commitment by refraining from throwing rocks. And yet, there may still be some windows that need repair because at some point in the past, our ancestors chose to throw some rocks through those windows. Part of being people who no longer throw rocks through windows might be repairing the windows our ancestors broke. Or else, honestly coming to terms with what it means to live with broken windows.
The same is true for our spiritualities and theologies. Our ancestors left us a lot of beliefs and behaviors. In order to choose what we want to keep and what we’re better off releasing, we may have to spend time sorting through all that we’ve inherited. And when we come across painful things, we can ask, “What responsibility for repair did I inherit?” Because that doesn’t go away until someone does the work. If we don’t take responsibility for the repair work our ancestors left for us to deal with, it’s going to be a piece of what future generations inherit from us.
So, what do you cherish from your ancestors? What did you inherit from them that you just need to release? And what needs to be repaired in that releasing? By honestly embracing the opportunities for repair we inherited from our ancestors, we invite healing not only for ourselves and the present day, but for our ancestors and descendants too.