We are the Answer to our Ancestors’ Prayers

Saturday, November 1, 2025 - All Saints Day

The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter (he/him)

Associate Professor of Theology, Ecology, and Race, Methodist Theological School in Ohio

Lead Pastor, The Loft Faith Community (Westwood, CA)

Allied Christian

I’m grateful to God, whom I serve with a good conscience as my ancestors did. I constantly remember you in my prayers day and night. When I remember your tears, I long to see you so that I can be filled with happiness. I’m reminded of your authentic faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice. I’m sure that this faith is also inside you. Because of this, I’m reminding you to revive God’s gift that is in you through the laying on of my hands. God didn’t give us a spirit that is timid but one that is powerful, loving, and self controlled.

(2 Timothy 1:3-7 CEV)

All ten of us gathered in the hospital to be with my grandmother, Yvonne Martin. She had a seizure early that morning, and my grandfather rushed her to the hospital. I was standing among my siblings, my mother, aunt, uncles, and grandfather as we surrounded her hospital bed. She was smiling and laughing, and everything seemed ok. Yvonne had suffered a stroke when she was forty-four years old and had only regained

partial ability to speak. Still, she communicated in nods, facial expressions, and various sounds that we learned to interpret. When it was time for us to leave the room so she could rest, she made a sound, uttered the word “pray” – and pointed to me.

In hindsight, I understand this prayer as a moment of transition and transformation. It was the last prayer my grandmother heard me pray because she was beginning her transition from this life to the next. She was also affirming the spiritual transformation she saw taking place within me, affirming my call to ministry and as a spiritual leader within our family.

My grandmother was born in 1942 in Hammond, Louisiana. Her parents were sharecroppers, and her grandparents had been enslaved on a plantation near her birthplace. She and my grandfather were solidly middle class, a far cry from their impoverished upbringing. Their lives were full of struggle and strife, joy and celebration. My grandmother was grateful because she knew she was standing on the prayers of her enslaved ancestors.

All Saints Day is an opportunity to remember our ancestors, or as the old folk say in my tradition, to “remember who we are, and whose we are.” This expression carries a double meaning. It is an invitation to remember that we are beloved children of the Divine and that despite the dehumanizing narratives that exist within a racist, sexist, ableist, and queerphobic society, we are worthy of love. The expression is also an invitation to remember the stories of our ancestors, not just to laud them for their courage and resilience. Instead, we

remember their stories so that we know how to place ourselves in the collective story of liberation, freedom, and self-determination. When they transition from this world to the next, their story is woven into the tapestry of our familial and cultural narratives. With bated breath, the thread of their story waits and listens as our life story unfolds. We are the answer to our ancestors’ prayer. We are the future ancestors who must continue to pray.

Reflection

We all carry deep stories within us. Deep stories are stories that are told over and over, reframed, and recast to uphold an interpretation of history that helps us understand who we are and who we are becoming. What are one or two deep stories from your family? How are those stories influencing you today?