Shakespeare said, "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all." (Hamlet) German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to a friend, "We should not be afraid that our strength is insufficient to endure any experience of death, even the closest and most terrifying. Death is not beyond our strength; it is the measuring line at the vessel's brim: we are full whenever we reach it . . . . I am not saying that we should love death; but we should love life so generously, so without calculation and selection, that we involuntarily come to include, and to love, death too (life's averted half); . . . Only because we exclude death, when it suddenly enters our thoughts, has it become more and more of a stranger to us; and because we have kept it a stranger, it has become our enemy. It is conceivable that it is infinitely closer to us than life itself “. What do we know of it?" What do we know of it indeed?
This time of year represents a dying. Summer dies ablaze in reds and yellows and oranges; the crops need harvesting or die in the night freeze; animals fly off to winter homes in warmer places or prepare to sleep the cold away. I take time each day putting the garden to bed; pulling up the spent marigolds and tomatoes, marveling at the cosmos still in bloom, filling the compost bin. This time of year represents a dying, but it is death with a hint, with a promise of new life.
The Pumpkin Field by Bobbi Katz.
First come the vines
green sprouting out of last year's seed
so much remembering stored in each tiny shell.
Across and around they creep
twisting and turning
camouflaging the brown soil
until one summer morning…
kazoom!
Bright orange blossoms explode
silent firecrackers in the sunshine
leaving me breathless with surprise.
Then gradually
the splash of morning color fades.
I forget the pumpkin field.
My eyes go where the corn grows high
or uncut hay sways in the slightest tremble
of an August breeze.
But the seed does not forget,
quietly turning flowers into tiny pumpkins
that grow fat and round
yellowing as the days grow shorter.
Each one different.
each one waiting for a sharp blade
to open a pair of
triangle eyes
and free
a jagged smile.
Each one waiting for a hand
to scoop out pulp for a pie.
Each one waiting for a candle to be
put
in place
Each one waiting
waiting and waiting for just one night
to leer into the darkness
laughing at the cold that is to come.
All winter long
the seed dreams orange dreams
beneath the white snow
storing summer memories:
First come the vines. Bobbi Katz
The Day of the Dead has been celebrated in Mexico, from October 29 through November 2, for centuries. It is a time to remember the dead with joy and to honor them with feasting, processions, pageantry and religious rituals. It combines the Roman Catholic All Souls and All Saints Days with 2,000 year old Mexican Indian traditions. It is a very important time of closeness between the living and the dead.
Writer Terry Tempest Williams tells a story about her encounter with the Day of the Dead. "Wearing my owl mask, I danced in the cobblestone streets. Bonfires lit every corner. Townsfolk circled them warming their hands. . . . Puppet shows were performed in the plaza as firecrackers exploded at our feet. Costumed children paraded through the village, carrying illuminated gourds as lanterns. . . . Carrying a lit candle, I entered the procession of masked individuals walking toward the cemetery. We followed the pathway of petals--marigold petals sprinkled so the Dead could follow. The iron gates were open. Hundreds of candles were flickering as families left offerings on the graves of their kin: photographs, flowers and food; calaveras--sugared skulls among them. Men and women washed the blue-tiled tombs that rose from the ground like altars, while other relatives cut back the vines that obscured the names of their loved ones. There were no tears here. A crescent moon rose above the mountains, a blood-red sickle. Porque esta aqui? Asked the old woman whose arms were wide with marigolds. I looked up and stood. Mi madre esta muerta. She points down, Aqui? No, no aqui--not here I try to explain in poor Spanish. She is buried back home, Los Estados Unidos, but this is a good place to remember her. We both pause. The woman motions me to another place in the cemetery. I follow her until she turns around. She slowly sweeps her hand across five or six graves. Mi familia, she says smiling. Mi esposo, mi madre y padre, mis ninos. Then her hand moves up as she recklessly waves to the sky. . . . I translate her words. Very beautiful--this sky above us. . . with clouds like roses . . . the Dead are among us. She hands me a marigold. Gracias, I say to her. This is the flower my mother planted each spring."
The Day of the Dead has a long history in Mexico. The Aztecs had rituals around the dead. They believed that heaven had thirteen layers and the underworld had nine and that souls went to different layers depending upon how they died. Warriors, for instance, accompanied the sun god and after four years became hummingbirds. Children went to a place with trees that sweat milk. The journey for all souls takes years to complete and so the Aztecs brought the dead food and drink to sustain them, believing that the dead could extract the essence of the offerings and leave the physical remains. On certain days of the year, they invited the dead to come and visit the living. The more recent Christian customs reflect these ancient indigenous ones. Home altars are made, trimmed with satin cloth and filled with marigolds--the flower of the dead--votive candles, offerings of food and drink, photographs, statues of Mary and Jesus, skeletons, calaveras--skulls made of sugar with the name of the dead on them--and depictions of the tree of life. There are masquerades and parades. There is a belief that the dead return for a visit. At midday on October 31 the children come and stay until midday November 1, when the adults come. That is All Saints Day, when Catholics pray for the dead. Adults stay until midday November 2, All Souls Day, when Catholics remember the spirits of all sinners who have died. On that day, especially, Mexicans go to the cemetery and sweep and decorate the graves with flowers. They have a party there and some stay all night.
Constance“Mexican folksong"
The Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, has become popular in this country as well, first with Mexican immigrants, then with other Latino/Latinas. You will find altars in New York City and in Kingston. Our service today tries, not to recreate the Mexican holiday, but to learn from its wisdom by making a remembering of our dead.
Choir: Breaths (Birago DiopYsaye Barnwell) Birago Diop is a Senegalese poet. Ysaye Barnwell is a music historian and member of Sweet Honey in the Rock.
In this culture, our relationship with death is often complex and contradictory. We act as if we don't want to know that we, and those we love, will die. The Day of the Dead asks us to face that reality, with joy as well as sorrow. It teaches us how to grieve and how to go on living. "Some of us remember with pleasure aunts, uncles, fathers, mothers, friends and lovers, cousins and neighbors, other times and other places: cities and farms, homesteads and rooms, yellow sunsets, chilly sunrises. Some of us find it hard to remember, for the memories that clamor inside us are jagged, like glass we ourselves did not break. Some of us remember people we have never met, but who through history, recent events, books and poems and film and paintings have met us and entered the secret chambers of our heart. Some of us remember children, and cannot be comforted. Some of us remember and are set free in our thanksgiving. Some of us remember and are tight with guilt or shame. Some of us struggle daily to remember with greater charity. Some of us weep easily and often. Others weep rarely, but grieve all the same. Some of us are stoic and say, "These things happen." Some of us rail against the unfairness of it all, and clench teeth and fists with discontent. Some of us bear the burden of those who took their own lives, or who suffered greatly at the end. Others among us remember only vast meadows of love and charity in which we played with joy. But all of us remember, whether we speak or are silent, whether we deny or affirm, whether we love or find it hard to love. May the power of love embrace us all, as the curtains between then and now are drawn open for a moment, and the fullness of life impresses itself on us, each in our own way." (Mark Belletini)
And what of those who have gone before us? Those we have loved, or hated, who have died? Memories can help us, heal us. Memories can hurt us, keep us stuck. When someone we love dies, we feel, some deeply, some not, sadness and grief and sometimes a whole host of other difficult, uncomfortable emotions, including maybe anger, or a feeling of being alone, of being abandoned, or regret, or relief. We might cry, or talk, or not talk; we might get busy doing things, we might walk around in a fog. We experience grief in our own ways, but whatever we feel or don't feel, our own attitudes about death and loss have an effect upon the way we grieve and the way we remember. The Day of the Dead has something to offer in this regard, as it allows us to grieve, even as it suggests to us that we try to remember with gladness and gratitude. In remembering those whose deaths have affected us, we can celebrate the gifts of their lives and we can honor them. In remembering we can divest ourselves of the parts of their lives that were not gifts. Remembering can be a chance to forgive. In remembering we ground ourselves in our past so that we can move into our future. When we mark our history we lift up the continuity in our own lives. We recognize where we come from so that we can better know who we are. Celebrating the Day of the Dead helps to move us closer to acceptance of death, both our loved ones' and our own. And when we can remember with some measure of acceptance, how joyful and how freeing are the memories. Now can be a time to remember. If you will, please take a moment to quiet down. Settle comfortably in your chairs, feet flat on the floor, eyes closed, hands resting lightly in the lap. Breathe gently, as steadily and as deeply as you can as we listen to the words of Bruce Marshall. "In an unsettled world, we seek . . . to enter a stillness that resides in the depths of each of us, a stillness that is at the center of all that exists. . . . For a few moments, let us seek quiet . . . not the quiet that is the absence of noise, for there is always noise. Rather it is like the stillness of a friend listening, . . . the noontime silence of sunlight on a lake, . . . the silence of a new idea, a thought that makes the world pause, . . . the quiet of growing plants, the quiet of a child sleeping, . . . the silence that brings rest, . . . the silence from which hope and love emerge." Let the sound of the bell take us into the silence. This is the time for us to remember. If you wish, allow yourself to remember the person or persons who have died. . . . Picture them in your mind. . . . Let this be a time for remembering. . . .
(Meditation “close with the sound of the bell)
And if you would like to remember someone now, please stand if you wish and simply say their name, either aloud or to yourself, then remain standing until everyone has had a chance. (Naming of the dead)
(Remain standing for the Kaddish by Mark Belletini)
Praise for Life. Praise for all the senses of the body reaching out and plucking the universe like an autumn apple. Praise for the dream of justice here upon the earth, equity and well-being for the whole commonwealth of humanity. May our children's children harvest the dreams we plant in our brief lives. Praise for Life. Praise though all of our philosophies and explanations trickle through the fingers of our experience like water. Praise for Life. Praise for it though it is brief before the lives of stars, and the lives of worlds, and the lives of even the trees that shade us. Praise for Life. Praise for the sacred power of remembrance. Praise for the sacred power of forgiveness and letting go. Praise for Life, the beginning, middle and amen of this prayer.
Closing Words by David Eaton
All living substance, all substance of energy, being and purpose, are united and share the same destiny. All people, those we love and those we known not of, are united and share the same destiny. Birth-to-death we share this untiy with the sun, earth, our brothers and sisters, strangers, flowers of the field, snowflakes, volcanoes and moon beams. Birth-Life-Death, Unknown-Known-Unknown. Our destiny: from unknown to unknown. May we have the faith to accept this mystery and build upon its everlasting truth.