I have always felt a strong connection to my extended family, including the ancestors I never knew. As a child, I attended huge family reunions for one branch of the family. They gave me the chance to bond with dozens of cousins, and those bonds continue to this day.

Because of those relationships, I developed a deep desire to understand where I came from. I have always been fascinated by family stories, but what gives me the greatest joy is experiencing the things and places my ancestors knew. I have my great-grandmother’s dishes. They are nothing special to anyone else, but they belonged to her. Since I never knew her personally, holding them gives me a tangible connection to a woman whose life would otherwise be only a name.

In recent months, I have plunged into the internet’s archives to research my family tree — not simply relying on the little leaves on Ancestry.com, but seeking archival material from other sources as well. I do not just want to know my ancestors’ names; I want to know who they were. For that, I need documents.

My great-great-grandparents on my mother’s side immigrated to the United States from Mousehole (pronounced “mow-zel”), a village in Cornwall, England. I had seen pictures and located it on a map, but that was not the same as standing there. Since my wife and I love to travel, we decided to spend this year’s vacation exploring southwest England, including Mousehole.

I had two goals: to see the village and to find my roots by searching its cemeteries for family members. The cemetery search was disappointing because burial plots are reused in England, so any trace of my family was gone. Yet the visit itself was a tremendous success.

I knew from family records that my great-great-grandfather, Obed Murley, and all his siblings were baptized in Paul Parish Church, where his parents were married. Knowing this from a document and standing in the place where it happened were two very different experiences. I touched the building, walked down its aisles, sat in its pews, and placed my hand on the baptismal font where my ancestors had received the waters of baptism.

Standing in that church helped me understand that knowing our ancestors and knowing God have something in common. We rarely encounter either one face-to-face. Instead, we come to know them through the traces they leave behind: stories, documents, objects, places, and the ways they have shaped our lives. I cannot sit down with Obed Murley and ask him about his life, but I can search for him in the records he left behind and stand in the places where he lived and worshiped. In a similar way, I cannot see God directly, but I can look for God’s presence in Scripture, in creation, in other people, and in the ordinary places where my life unfolds.

The search for my ancestors has taught me that absence does not mean someone is entirely gone. Sometimes the traces they leave behind are enough to reveal who they were and to remind us that we are not alone.

That power did not come merely from being in a church. It came from the familial connection, certainly, but also from recognizing that places can hold spiritual meaning. The more I learn about my ancestors, the more I understand what it means to search for God. Both searches invite patience, attention, and a willingness to notice what is easy to overlook.

We do not need to travel across the ocean to connect with God. God is among us in Franklin County: on the town commons, in our homes, along the nature trail, and even at the pharmacy. God is part of the memory of family members long gone, but they are not lost, because the same God who guided them guides us now. God is wherever we are. We do not carry God’s presence into the world; we discover that presence already woven into the places where we live, work, worship and care for one another.

The Rev. Jason Burns is an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts. He serves at All Saints Episcopal Church in South Hadley and lives in Greenfield. To read more of his work, go to learningbyfire.com.