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Maridel Bowes, M.A.
www.evolvingjourney.com





In This Issue
Lineage Anyone?
Crossing Paths Archives


 
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A Renegade Branch on the
 
Family Tree 
 
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I think of myself as a crooked shoot off my ultra-conservative family tree--a renegade branch that adds character, but probably not pedigree. So it's no surprise that lineage has never been of interest to me. But life loves jokes. Nothing like writing your mother's memoir to correct a myopic point of view.
 
Here's the speed-dial version of the lineage I was blind to for so long: Maternal great-grandfather: a minister. My father: a minister. Loving God, but not the ministry, I shrewdly married a math major who turned into: a minister. Left the religion of my youth, became a therapist and created a series of workshops which morphed into: a spiritual community with me as its  leader. Next stop? A teaching astrologer whose first class of "twelve disciples" lasted almost a decade and was nothing if not a devout congregation committed to living their divine designs.
 
Now, I write for a living; but I ask you, what else is there for me talk about except the stunning graces and less than graceful, but deeply educational, pratfalls of our spiritual paths? It's come to this: I'm an internet "minstress."
 
All this retrospect has opened my heart to the various kinds of lineage in our lives and how they shape our presence in the world.
 
 
 
Lineage Anyone? 
 
 
Non-Occupational Lineage. Not all lineages are occupational. There are gifts that are handed down as palpably as great-great grandma Lucy's armoire: psychic gifts, speaking talent, inspired cooking, love of animals-or horror movies. Such gifts may or may not be used to pay the bills. The primary idea is that the genetic talent be refined...made better, more expansive or adapted to the times. After a few generations, the gift may no longer look like its distant cousin, but below the surface, maintain the essence of the same ancient craft.

Non-Biological Lineage. You, like me, may be part of another kind of lineage that has nothing to do with the style of your family genes. I have a living mentor in the astrological world. He had teachers and those teachers had teachers...some of whom are now gone, but live on through their students. Now one of my students is a teacher and the lineage continues. Anytime we love a service or a craft, we teach whether formally or informally because we can't imagine keeping the outrageous possibilities of this gift to ourselves. In reaching back to our benefactors and in recreating what was put in our hands and passing it on... we are lineage makers.

Dark Lineage. Years ago, I read a powerful story of a man whose face was deeply disfigured. On the first night of a new "toastmasters" kind of group, he volunteered to go first. "When I was born, God gave me the gift of this face," he said. "It's just that it's the kind of gift that upon opening, you say, 'Oh, you shouldn't have!" Many of us are given the dubious gift of a "disfigured lineage" -- the inheritance of the dangerous, the painful or the unwanted. It's as if our ancestors are passing on to us the baton of much-needed healing in the line. "I did what I could," they seem to whisper. "See if you can take my failure, my attempts, or my modicum of progress and make it better." When we rise to that occasion, we are like the supposedly "disfigured" man whose acceptance of his gift put everyone at ease and in so doing, opened the door for exceptional honesty.

Inner Lineage. There's another lineage that isn't dependent on the outer world of ancestors, teachers or map of family darkness. It's the lineage we choose moment to moment--the selves we are forming with every breath. What have our previous selves left to us and how have we used it? What are the central messages handed down by our own experiences across the years? What have we made of them? What challenges have we inherited from our own choices and to what degree have we taken responsibility for them? Consciousness, it turns out, is the purest lineage of all--even capable of transcending all others.
 
 
Til We Cross Paths Again,
 
 Maridel
 
 
 
Crossing Paths Archives 
 
 
For those of you new to Crossing Paths, here's the link to the archives of the last year--just in case you want to browse!
 

� 2009 Evolving Journey. All Rights Reserved. Contact Maridel Bowes at [email protected].



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