Past Lives and Reincarnation

I once met a very talented young woman with the last name Avila. She told me that her family would sometimes say in jest that their great-great-great aunt was Teresa of Avila. But they had no idea whether this was true. They might just as well have been descended from Pedro of Avila, the town drunk. Or both. Your ancestry, like your extended family, is often a mixed bag.

I was once asked whether I was descended from the famous Captain John Smith saved by the prayers of Pocahontas. I said: “A guy who annoys people so much they want to kill him and has to be saved by the heroic efforts of a devoted woman: that sounds like a relative of mine.” But like Miss Avila, I have no idea.

My assumption about my ancestors is that it consists of a pack of ne’er-do-wells all the way back to the beginning of time. I sometimes think: My great-great-great-times-ten-to-the-fifteenth-power-great grandfather was Adam, the guy who screwed it all up in the beginning. Many people don’t know this, but his full name was Adam Smith, but not the economics guy. I trace myself back to a long line of sinners and screw-ups. This makes sense to me. It helps me make sense of the world.

What doesn’t make as much sense to me is the notion of past lives. When someone says, “In a past life, I was a brilliant doctor,” I wonder, “Okay, but how is that going to help you in medical school now?” Often people claim that in one of their “past lives” they were some important king or queen. Rarely do people say, “In my past life, I was a drunk rapist who was stabbed by a woman I was assaulting on a street in Chicago, so I need to do penance.”

Read more at The Catholic Thing.