How do we do life when everything is death?
Some ancestral guidance, please
What a time, eh?
Everything is dying. We are crying, we are suffering, because the world is crying and dying and suffering. We feel their death as if it were our own. The veil is so thin.
Maybe we think we’re alone in the hurt. Maybe we feel guilty acknowledging our grief because we are the “lucky” ones, and our suffering pales in comparison to so many others.
Once upon a time, our ancestors knew what to do. They held this grief collectively. They listened to the shadows, honored them, and learned from them.
In many cultures around the world (Celtic, Mesoamerican, Indian, and Catholic, to name a few), they understood the veil between the physical and spiritual (“other”) world was at its thinnest. They knew that nature wanted us to greet the darkest parts of ourselves. To listen to our anger and grief and to learn from it.
Our eyes are more sensitive in the dark. What can we see?
Our ancestors explored together. Ancient Celts and Mesoamericans looked to ancestors on Samhain and Day of the Dead and practiced rituals of riddance and abundance. Diwali or Deepwali, the Indian Festival of Lights and Hindu New Year, celebrates light conquering dark and beginning anew. Coinciding with a new moon, it is literally the darkest night on the lunisolar calendar.
Last weekend, I almost didn’t go on the retreat with my gfriends. How could I have fun and laugh and drink and be merry when there was so much dying? When I couldn't stop crying the night before? CAN WE PLEASE JUST TALK ABOUT IT?!!!
I went to the sleepover/retreat anyway, and we talked about it, and everyone said THEY were crying, too! And we acknowledged and honored the feelings and the reality that everything is death, and dressed as dead people and died laughing, and went for a walk in the dark around stone altars, and lit candles, and did what we imagined our ancestors would do.
The JOY, though! I've never chugged so much oxygen laughing in my life. Maybe death can put us back together.
Let's talk about it, wear the skull masks and the skeleton suits. Embrace it. I for one won't take off these earrings until it snows.
Holding your hand across the ether… xo.
<3 Summer
Chugging oxygen, this is classic. Definitely what we need more of joy and laughter. Sounds like a good plan to maybe bring us all back together.
"The JOY, though! I've never chugged so much oxygen laughing in my life. Maybe death can put us back together."
I love this! Because for much of my childhood, laughing wasn't allowed, like literally, my father made it a sign of strength to not laugh at Red Skelton. I mean, come on, who (back in the '60's, and especially if you were a kid), wouldn't laugh at Red Skelton? But there you have it.
Now, laughing out loud, loud enough for people to turn around in the restaurant and make my grown son roll his eyes, is my joy, my most radical act, and a fine weapon to have in your arsenal against the dark that threatens to consume. I'm so glad you went out with your gfriends. The best.