In an all night prayer ceremony on All Soul’s Day, honoring those who have gone before, we held vigil on the thinnest night of the year, where the veil between heaven and earth is like gossamer. A time torn between grief and praise. At dusk, the next night, I saw a fox slink along a city street in London. Astonished, I consulted a book of symbols and read an old myth about how foxes would help guide shamans through the mountain passes when no path could be found. They prepared the way for healing to move.
A week later, while cleaning out an old closet, I uncovered a box full of old documents: tax returns, the title to my house, and my Will. Underneath those papers was a forgotten notebook of genealogical research mined by my uncle years ago. Sifting through it, I discovered the Will of my great grandmother’s great grandfather. I sat in stunned silence as I read what he left behind. Only the first names of the slaves were listed, each one given to his surviving children. Human beings passed down like heirlooms. In my right hand I held my Will, and in my left, the Will of my ancestor. With the weight of souls in my hands, balancing waves of grief like the scales of justice, I cried out, “What is the way through?”
With his rough voice, undomesticated as the fox, John the Baptist prepares the way for the young rabbi whose voice we have not yet heard.* A baptism of fire, following that of water, will purify and cleanse those hearts seeking forgiveness. A clarion call for justice, for decency, and for the value of every life. As I pray for my ancestors, an umbrella of grace held over the shame, a path of repair emerges. A way is prepared for healing to move.
