“When an elder dies, a library burns to the ground.” African Proverb

I was preparing for my online morning meditation. I rejected this quote at first. It seemed final and dreary and lacked inspiration. However, I couldn’t let it go. Something within me needed to speak to it for my ancestors.

I understand that when someone passes we can feel a loss; however, does that person’s library actually burn to the ground?

I think of many stories that my own father told me about war-torn Italy and his triumphs and travails, and yet there is much I wish I could still ask him. But he’s gone and, in a sense, his library has burnt to the ground.

However, then I realize that the libraries of our ancestors are more than just stories; they are consciousness itself. That can never burn to the ground. It can never be lost. I remember a quote by the beautiful mystic Ernest Holmes where he talks about our subconscious being like a picture gallery of every thought, experience, and memory. If we choose to walk through that picture gallery and open up to it, we find wisdom there. Consciousness is energy and, as we know, energy can never be created or destroyed.

For myself, I come from an ancestry of a lot of pain, war, disease, and poverty, and yet I also come from an ancestry of triumph over those conditions. I’ll always remember the story my cousin told of the family gathering back together after being separated during the war. My father was the one responsible for bringing beauty and art back into the home, renewing the house, finding a piano, inspiring everyone. Less than a decade after that, he found himself in America as a doctor. He was constantly striving to be more.

I’m left with that — that constant striving to be more. It is an amazing trait and one that moves me to create and expand my life. That is my ancestral wisdom, and there is more from my grandparents, aunts, and others.

Then there is the New Thought ancestral wisdom that I feel is my journey to carry forward — the wisdom of healing through consciousness, the wisdom of embodying the knowing of our identity as God.

When an ancestor dies, the library can only burn to the ground if we allow it to. Instead, I invite us to embellish that wisdom, make it new and appropriate as we move forward. I invite us to take what is meaningful and useful and expand it to fit our times, to remember not to repeat the past, but to create from the old something new and even more powerful.

Love and Aloha, Rev. Dr. Rita Andriello-Feren, Author, Co-Founding Spiritual Director CSL Kaua’i & the Institute of Magnificence