Gathering Music: Anne Hills -- Angle of the Light, Brown Leaves
Opening words: Harbingers of Frost by Robert Terry Weston
Autumn, we know, Is life enroute to death. The asters are but harbingers of frost. The trees, flaunting their colors at the sky, In other times will follow where the leaves have fallen, And so shall we. Yet other lives will come. So we may know, accept, embrace, The mystery of life we hold a while Nor mourn that it outgrows each Separate self, but still rejoice That we may have our day. Lift high our colors to the sky! And give, In our time, fresh glory to the earth.
Not for Children Only
Samhain
Samhain is the ancient Celtic festival marking the new year, as the earth turns away from the sun in the Northern Hemisphere, the harvest is in and winter is coming. This is a gateway period: a movement into the darker months of winter and the growth cycle marked by rest. The agricultural year is at its close and at its beginning. Darkness is for new beginnings. The fallow time is here, the time of introspection and quiet that will, in its way, result in germination. The Celtic calendar follows agricultural cycles.
Celtic peoples, united most strongly through speaking related languages, have been around Europe since about 1200 BCE. At first they ranged in territory from Ireland and Scotland and the Northwest corner of Spain, Galicia, all the way to central Anatolia in modern day Turkey. The Romans knew them well, fought several wars with them, and wrote about them often. Most of our information about ancient Celtic peoples comes from Ireland, Scotland, portions of France and Spain via the Greeks, the Romans and people in the British Isles. Modern day Wicca, a neo-pagan religion, bases itself on the Celtic calendar and some Celtic practices. The Celtic celebration of Samhain begins the winter half of the year. It was believed that Cailleach, (KAL-yuch) , meaning the veiled one in old Irish and the old woman, or hag in modern Scottish Gaelic, the aspect of the goddess that appears as the aged and wise crone, struck the earth with her hammer, or magic wand, making it iron hard and destroying living plants. She is the goddess of winter. Although a destroyer, she is also a creator, shaping the landscape, the hills and valleys, with her hammer. (Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Book of Days)
Because Cailleach is associated with death and destruction, as well as with creation, with winter as but one of the seasons of growth, it follows that Celts understood death to be a part of the cycle of life. The seeming death that occurs in winter is not really a death, in the sense of annihilation. It is, rather, a resting in which introspection gives birth to new growth. Thus they believed that on the night of Samhain, when we come closer to the season of darkness and death, the gates to the Otherworld were open, allowing us to come closer to the people who have died, our ancestors. The dead were thought to transmit their wisdom, knowledge, and memory of ancient teachings and customs to us.
Today we call this Halloween, or All Hallows Eve, a time when the dead become more accessible to us. Now Halloween connotes tricks and treats, goblins and ghouls, frightening and/or funny. Some consider it a secular holiday. Some Christians think that Halloween is pagan and, therefore, dangerous. This week, as I drove in West Virginia, I saw a billboard in a field that said Halloween is the devil’s holiday. In its origins, however, Halloween, Samhain, is a sacred, not a fearful, not a secular, time of communion.
Song #52 In Sweet Fields of Autumn Joys and Sorrows Offering and OffertorySamhain: Remembrance
Why are we talking about Samhain today? Because as Unitarian Universalists we draw our own tradition partly from the wealth and wisdom of other traditions. A recognized part of our tradition, meaningful for many of us, is the wisdom from earth-centered spiritualities which teach us to live in harmony with the cycles of nature. In Samhain we can find nuggets of universal meaning and truth which we can take to heart and mind. So we explore. We look. Not to take religious customs and holy days and use them for our own purposes or entertainment, but to seek to know them in their own context, as best we can accomplish that. Celebrating Samhain, the new year, is about looking back and looking forward. The harvest is in, we prepare for the winter; we are turning toward the dark. And in such introspection we are mindful of endings and beginnings; we remember the loved ones who have died.
Some of us feel dread when we think of death. Samhain would tell us that death is nothing but a natural part of life. It is not annihilation. Those who are dead do not completely leave us. We hold them in our memories and, at this time of year, the memories can grow strong, even to the sense of a presence. Samhain is an invitation to celebrate life and death. Are you willing to remember a person or persons who have died? Are you willing to identify something that person has taught you, or given you?
In remembering the dead we celebrate the gifts of their lives and we honor them. In remembering we divest ourselves of the parts of their lives that were not gifts. Remembering can be a chance to forgive, a chance for acceptance. A chance for peace with our past. When we mark our history we lift up the continuity in our lives. We recognize where we come from so that we can better know who we are. Setting aside this time for our dead also helps with our grieving, as it allows it a voice and perhaps, a tear. 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. Some of us cry, some of us talk, some of us don’t talk, some of us get busy doing things, some of us walk around in a fog. We experience grief in our own ways. Samhain gives us a chance to experience grief, if that’s what we need to do. More, celebrating Samhain 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.
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. In 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.” If you wish, allow yourself to remember the person or persons who have died. . . . Picture them in your mind. . . . Let this be a moment for remembering. . . . Call up the times you spent together . . . Recognize what that person has taught you, how he/she has influenced you. . . And if you would like to bring that person here today, please come up, write the name on a re-cycled post-it and place it on the tree here, in an autumnal bouquet of leaves. Please let us keep silence as we do this.
People come forward and write the names. Play Colin McPhee, second movement (Elegy) from Symphony #2
It is important to remember, just as it is important to let go of either holding the past too tightly, or trying to change it. It is important to learn what we can, to cherish what we can, to accept what we can. It is important to set aside this time to remember, and to live in the present moment. “Gather the stars if you wish it so. Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women (and men, boys and girls, animals and other beings). Gather for keeping years and years. And then . . . Loosen your hands, let go and say good-by. Let the stars and songs go. Let the faces and years go. Loosen your hands and say good-by. (Carl Sandburg)
For those who have gone before us, who loved, shaped and nurtured us,
We remember you. Dearly departed, rest in peace.
For the unknown ancestors who risked the journey for their children's children,
We remember you. Dearly departed, rest in peace.
(For the spiritual ancestors, teachers, friends and families who have taught us so much,)
We remember you. Dearly departed, rest in peace.
For the unsung saints and martyrs whose lives and deaths blazed the way for us,
We remember you. Dearly departed, rest in peace.
For those before us who struggled for justice and (ethnic), religious, (gender, and class)
harmony and for those before us who suffered persecution, injustice and bigotry,
We remember you. Dearly departed, rest in peace.
For those who died before we were ready to let them go and for those who died with
words left unsaid between us,
We remember you. Dearly departed, rest in peace.
For those who fought death and did not want to go and for those who sought death
and found a release,
We remember you. Dearly departed, rest in peace.
For all those, we the living carry them with us: we are their voices, their hands and
their hearts.
Closing words: by May Sarton: Late Autumn
On random wires the rows of summer swallows Wait for their lift-off. They will soon be gone Before All Saints and before All Hallows, The changing time when we are most alone. Disarmed, too vulnerable, full of dread, And once again as naked as the trees Before the dark, precarious days ahead And troubled skies over tumultuous seas. When we are so transparent to the dead There is no wall. We hear their voices speak, And as the small birds wheel off overhead We bend toward the earth suddenly weak. How to believe that all will not be lost? Our flowers, too, not perish in the blight? Love, leave me your South against the frost Say 'hush' to my fears, and warm the night.From Invocation to Kali
Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers.