Tom McKnight
Unlike most westernized cultures relying upon science, logic, systems and documented evidence designed and required to validate earth and heaven matters as they pertain to origins, and existences, and the attempt to qualify and quantify the ‘magnetic like attraction’ that draws one to particular areas of work or geographic points on the planet, indigenous cultures operate on a different framework, and perhaps spiritual frequency, driven by timeless knowledge, belief and faith systems, enhanced by oral history and spiritual attributes that not only incorporate our physical DNA with increasing cellular memory research being explored by science, but perhaps may also include future research and discovery of spiritual DNA attributes that in concert guide some along their “On earth as it is in Heaven” mission. Thus, the well-known truism that “The Universe and the Earth are circular and all things end in a circle,” is an ephemeral indigenous peoples’ understanding and truth that is possibly linked to one’s destiny and determines where, when, what, why and how, one finds one’s life altered and directed onto a path that was not of one’s planning, or choosing.
Driven by a strong faith in the Creator, despite the physical disruptions along life’s highway – death, broken relationships and other life altering events causes one to engage in a temporary pit-stop – pull off the road reflection of such events and if one has released themselves to the ordering of their steps to the Lord, there is an opportunity to transmute the negatives into the positives and decisions to be taken; thus, my journey to northwest Alabama in search of my roots occurred upon my mother’s death in New York in 2004 while I was on a United Nations mission in Sudan.
Thus, the journey and mission from Sudan to New York and finally Alabama in her memory, to connect our roots that were not spoken of by the elders when children were around, surfaced in my later years. Hence, information and clues provided by an elder surviving uncle placed me on the roots search pathway driven by our belief system that ‘the ancestors’ will tap someone on the shoulder to ensure that their stories are not forgotten. It is my assumption that I, was the ‘tapee’.
My return to Sudan and subsequent repatriation to the U.S. in 2005 led to 14,490 miles driven in 86 days to find family I never knew existed or met before; armed only with a couple of family stories, a single physical address and a GPS unit. In consequence among family found nationwide, the roots-connect journey is regarded by all as having been divine intervention inspired and “directed.”
Finding my Grandmother’s unmarked grave sixty plus years after her death in Ohio and placing a headstone to honor her prior earthly presence appears to have been my ‘find the ancestors 101 baptism’ and grew resulting in locating my Great- grandmother, the cook at Ivy Green when Helen Keller was a child, Sophia Napier Watkins’ grave and headstone in Tuscumbia. Locating my Great Grandfather, Rev. Fred W. Watkins’ unmarked grave based upon resurrection of a forgotten African-American fraternal organization’s existence, Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), resulted in identifying the alleged unmarked grave of his final resting place linked to Viney Murphy, (Helen Keller’s siblings’ nursemaid and MTA organization officer) and Great-grandmother’s church and fellowship sister.
An African-American newspaper no longer in circulation provided the last clues to Rev. Watkins’ final resting place. With those stories and histories resurrected, other calls unrelated to family characterize a purpose that transcends race, religion, color or creed throughout northwest Alabama best expressed by the following composition recently written in bereavement reflection of a beloved sibling:
“In the Realm”
In the realm of the spirit there is only – just spirit. There are no black ancestors; there are no white ancestors; there are no red ancestors; there are no yellow ancestors – for those distinctions reside only in the realm of the physical.
So when the ideas and inspiration come to you – to honor those whose lives have passed, and you are tapped on the shoulders by the ancestors, know, that you are chosen, and directed, by those that live in a world of time and space where distinctions no longer exist as they do in the physical. In their realm, they share a space of common diversity where there is – only spirit, created, directed and orchestrated – by God.
Though others may have their own reasons and motivations for their presence in the area, mine is ancestrally, spiritually motivated and ‘directed’.
