The encompassing communion of “all my relations”

As the child of Irish immigrants, I grew up with the expression “back home.” We moved frequently as a military family and, without a permanent home and relatives in Canada, there was a pervasive sense of belonging to a place we had never seen and people we had never met. 

In 1968, we were posted to Germany, which carried the bonus of finally being able to meet our relatives. The first visit was that summer, when my father arranged for my mother to take us to London on a military aircraft (a massive C-130 Hercules). We travelled by train to Liverpool, where we were warmly greeted by two uncles and their families. From Liverpool we travelled to Dublin to meet more maternal and paternal relatives. It was very exciting to be in the midst of extended family for the first time.

Our visit was cut short when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress a reformist movement. We were instructed to return immediately, so there was a mad dash across the Irish Sea by passenger ferry, to be met by an uncle, who sped us to Heathrow to catch a military flight back to Germany. We returned to Ireland that Christmas, accompanied by my father, and had reunions with all of our uncles, aunts and cousins, and our two ancient grandmothers. 

Some of us are blessed with strong families, and the sense of surety and support that comes from knowing you will always belong to people who care about you no matter what. There is, though, a much more encompassing blessing, a much greater cluster of relations that we all belong to. 

In Christian theology we call this “communion.” Communion means each person belongs equally to Christ, and to one another. This is expressed in baptism when we sign with the cross and “mark you as Christ’s own forever” and when we say “we receive you into the household of God.” Communion also describes the interconnectedness of all creation: every person, every living creature, all of nature, all that comes from God.

This belief in encompassing communion is also found in the spirituality of Indigenous Peoples. The late Richard Wagamese, an Ojibwe author, wrote of this in an essay published in the Kamloops Daily News (June 11, 2013):

“To be here as morning breaks is to feel unity. It’s to feel connected to everything around you and to absorb it, bring it into the very fiber of your being, like learning to breathe all over again. It’s to come to understand that you are alive because everything else is. It is to comprehend what your people mean when they say ‘All my relations.’ 

It means everything. It’s not uttered in a casual way nor is it meant to be. In its solemnity it is meant as a benediction, a blessing and a call to this unity you feel all around you in the depth of morning. This phrase, this articulation of spirit, is a clarion call to consciousness. 

It means that you recognize everything as alive and elemental to your being. There is nothing that matters less than anything else. By virtue of its being, all things are vital, necessary and a part of the grand whole, because unity cannot exist where exclusion is allowed to happen. This is the great teaching of this statement. 

‘All my relations,’ means all. When a speaker makes this statement it’s meant as recognition of the principles of harmony, unity and equality. It’s a way of saying that you recognize your place in the universe and that you recognize the place of others and of other things in the realm of the real and the living. In that it is a powerful evocation of truth. 

Because when you say those words you mean everything that you are kin to. Not just those people who look like you, talk like you, act like you, sing, dance, celebrate, worship or pray like you. Everyone. You also mean everything that relies on air, water, sunlight and the power of the Earth and the universe itself for sustenance and perpetuation. It’s recognition of the fact that we are all one body moving through time and space together… 

Your people say these words as an act of ceremony and here in this majestic light of morning you feel that ritual glow within you like an ember from a fire. All things connected. All things related. All things grown equally out of the one single act of Creation that spawned us. This is what you feel and this is what you mean. 

You come to realize too, that if we could all glean the power of this one short statement, we could change the world. We could evoke brotherhood and sisterhood. We could remind ourselves and each other that we need each other, that there is not a single life that is not important to the whole or a single thing that is not worth protecting and honoring.” 

As the month of November unfolds, celebrating our communion with all saints and all souls, and remembering the catastrophic consequences of war and violence; as the ground begins to freeze and the trees stand stark against the sky as we await the winter months; and as we heal from a global pandemic, it is good to remember that we need one another.