Marcus Aurelius, Deaf Percussionist Evelyn Glennie And "Ancestor Worship"

Alan: Last night, Chuck and I watched a marvelous documentary, "Touch The Sound," about deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie, a Scots woman. 

Glennie re-membered her departed father with an affection and sense-of-incorporation that reminded me of "ancestor worship."

After the movie, we decided this antique nomenclature conjured pejorative connotation, partly because "worship" is "reserved for deity," a semantic view that obliges westerners to see "ancestor worship" as fundamentally blasphemous. 

We settled on the term "Ancestor Reverence" also recalling Chesterton's observation that "tradition is the democracy of the dead," a never-ending polity in which everyone - past, present and future - "votes" on "The Good," and thereby contributes to an enduring touchstone that bends the moral universe toward justice. 

Chuck commented that "the psychologized west" errs by counseling the aggrieved to "reach closure" and that "closing the door" does disservice to everyone, living and dead - a kind of self-imposed amputation.

Chuck is not suggesting we wallow in grief but that we constantly resurrect our loved ones by following "Glennie's lead," incorporating them in memory, holding them in heart, making them living members of the "meaning communities" in which we necessarily live.

Such constancy makes us bigger and our communities more luminous and more numinous.

Touch The Sound
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/11/touch-sound-documentary-film-about-deaf.html