LOVE LETTERS, RINGS, WREATHS, SINGLE ROSES, and CURSES FOUND IN THE MUD

Excerpt from page 29:  Some people commit their troubles to the river in a more tangible way by physically throwing them in and letting the water take them away.  The more modern flotsam and jetsam that washes up on the foreshore can sometimes feel quite intrusive.  I have found prayers and curses, remembrance wreaths, single roses, love letters, torn-up photographs, and wedding and engagement rings.  They are all windows unto private moments and uncomfortable evidence of unhappiness.  In many ways, I dread these encounters.  They make me feel uneasy, as though I am riffling through  personal possessions or eavesdropping on a stranger's life. It is a very different feeling from finding an old object that belonged to someone long ago. There is a chance the owners of these objects are still alive and that they threw them into the river in the belief that the water would swallow their problems up and make them disappear for ever.  They thought they were throwing them into a private space; they didn't consider scavengers like me.

(Sometimes she throws such items back into the river.)

If you want to read about the 17th century pub tokens Lara Maiklem has found and how the pubs and owners of the tokens can be identified... apparently there is a lot on the internet about this!  Can you imagine having a pub owner ancestor and being able to own his token!)

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THANKS!

Thanks for reading ANCESTRY WORSHIP Genealogy.  

It's my labor of love, my way to share, but it's also real nice to know that 

people are reading and finding the information I present interesting and useful!

THANKSGIVING : TIME TO RECORD FAMILY MEMORIES

There is never a better time than NOW.  

If you can, record the interview.  

If interview is too intimidating a word, have instead a lovely chat.

Tell me about your childhood...

What is your earliest memory?

When did you start school?

Where did you go to school?

What  where your favorite subject(s)? Least favorite?

Teachers?

Did you like school?  

What games did you play?

When you were five, what did you want to do when you grew up?

Do you have any hobbies or interests that began in your childhood?

Tell me about your parents...

.....

MUDLARK BY LARA MAIKLEM : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

This book was unexpectedly fascinating and satisfying so I'm recommending it for all of you who are interested in the history of England, London, the Thames River - or want to learn more about what mudlarking is all about.

Maiklem is a mudlark, a person who is obsessed with finding objects in the river mud as the Thames River's tides change and bits and pieces of history are embedded or washed ashore. Her knowledge must include a study of the river, it's history of changing route as well as what structures and events have occurred through time which influence where to look. There is so much treasure to find, especially as one hones their eye and their knowledge of the very antique, and as a citizen archeologist of sorts, Maiklem does find so much. Pipes, holy objects, hand made buttons, hairpins, and trading beads.  Bricks from Tudor buildings, a variety of bottles from wine and ale to witch.  Medieval weaponry, rings that can still be worn, and objects that Romans left behind.

And of course, besides the excitement of the find and the expert's declarations, what is most satisfying for Maiklem is that recognition that there is a person and a story attached to every item.  Some of these stories she must imagine but others, because of identifying information on the piece, can be attached to documented persons.  (And perhaps most touching is her find of shoes that still have the impressions of the person who once wore them - their toes.

Page 81 Excerpt:  That week and the following one were busy, so it was some time before I got round to sorting and cleaning what I'd found that day, and it wasn't until I'd taken everything out of my finds bag that I remembered the little black ring, which was caught in a gritty seam at the bottom. I turned it in my fingers and held it up to the light. With my glasses on I could see more clearly and, on the inside, I could make out some letters.  The style of the engraving made me think the ring could be quite old after all.  I felt a tinge of excitement and grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil.  Some letters were completely tarnished over, but I wrote down the ones I could read; "H-PE X I - IV - IN'.  It was like solving an anagram, with missing letters, which wasn't easy, but slowly I worked out what was missing and rearranged the words so that they made sense" 'I LIVE IN HOPE X." A posy ring!

A posy ring is a ring inscribed with a short sentimental expression, or 'posy,' from the Middle English word for poetry.  They became popular around the fourteenth century and were given by either partner at any stage of the relati0onship and the inscriptions, both French and English, were usually concerning love, friendship, and loyalty: God Made Us Two One', In They Breast My Heart Doth Rest', "Love Never Dies Where Virtue Lies.' ....

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PRINCESS WITH SHIELD - ARMORY

 

THE ANGEL LAILAH

 

EXCERPT Page 65

This is when I came across a beautiful teaching in the Babylonian Talmud that seemed to make perfect sense.  According to this medieval Jewish text, the angel Lailah lives in the womb and watches over the embryo until it is time to be born.  The angel teaches the unborn child everything there is to know about the mysteries of life and his or her own soul.  When the time comes for the child to be born, the angel Lailah puts her finger in front of her own mouth as if to say, "shhh," and then presses the upper lip of the child so all the memories are forgotten.  According to the mouth, the light touch on the child's lip leaves a small indentation above the lip called a philtrum, which is something we all have. I started to think that perhaps the angel Lailah just hadn't pressed quite hard enough on some children's lip's, and this is why they had come into their current life bearing soul memories.

PATRIOTISM IS VOTING

 

THE BOY WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by CATHY BYRD : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

This is the rare story of reincarnation in the American and Christian context.  Author Cathy Byrd is the mother of a son who very young was obsessed with baseball.  He wanted to wear uniforms every day and play baseball constantly. The photo on the cover is her son, who became the first child to pitch the first ball for a game at Dodger's Stadium in Los Angeles, and became a honorary Dodger.

She, like many parents whose children start talking strangely about having been an adult, dismissed her son's obsessions and communications.  Bit by bit the story unfolds and part of that story is how she as a Christian was admonished by friends and finally sought out a Christian minister that she could trust to talk about it with.

For those of us who think there is something to reincarnation and do not think there should be a conflict with Christianity, my opinion is that is too sad. 

The only way to 'prove' something that is part of a belief that millions of not-Christian people have on this is to listen, take notes, do research, and see how much an innocent child reports is correct. Byrd does a convincing job of this.

Her son remembers a life as baseball great Lou Gehrig (1903 -1941) who died young of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular disease that became familiar to Americans as 'Lou Gehrig's Disease." 

(According to Carol Bowman (not part of this book) most of the children who report past lives in the West seem to have died deaths that were not peaceful. In Gehrig's case, his death was untimely because he was relatively young and had much more to do. 

Just to make things more interesting, there is a possibly that Cathy Byrd is also the incarnation of Lou's mother. She learns by researching out to people who knew Lou and his mother that no one told Lou the truth that he was going to die.

Thumbs up on this one!

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Book Review - all rights reserved.

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE : INTERVIEWS WITH DYING PEOPLE

I'm hooked on TED Talks....

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ENTERING INTO THE HOLIDAYS

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