Halloween and All Souls Day musings

     I just heard the CBC's Stuart MacLean declare that Halloween is his favourite holiday, and it set me thinking.  The old "All Hallowed [Souls'] Eve" is so much more than the candy and princess or Spiderman costumes of today, and my goal in our Religious Education times at UCM is to go more deeply into its meaning.  We are, after all, coming into the colder, darker weather of the year's cycle, when all the green growing plant world dies back.  Long before Christianity this season was most significant to our Celtic ancestors.  To them, October 31st was pivotal, the cross-quarter day between the sun's autumnal equinox and its winter solstice, or shortest day.  

    For the Celts, the date was their New Year's Eve, called "Samhain,"  presided over by Lord Samhain, the Lord of the Dead.  They believed that the spirits of all the humans and animals that had died in the past year were being summoned to a Feast of the Dead, and it was important to ensure no passing spirits would treat them badly.  And so as the the year turned, and they believed the veil between the world of the living and the dead was most thin, they left out food for any wandering spirits.  If people went out on these dark nights, they wore disguises -- simpler in days before commercialism! -- so that possibly malevolent spirits couldn't recognize them.  Here are the roots of our "Trick or Treat, smell my feet!" 

    Btw, the Celts held apple trees as one of their seven sacred trees, and so regarded the fruit as a food to give them long life.  Reminds me of "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"!  Of course apples are prevalent at this time of year, and a natural gift before the days of buying huge bags of Halloween candies to give out --and maybe the apples help our teeth, still!  For our October 27th treat we had apples plus a tray of Yorkshire parkin, or crumbly gingerbread, traditionally given out on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5th (a kind of historical anniversary but infused with fire celebrations, befitting the season).

     I see a connection, too, to the Hispanic celebration of Dia de Los Muertos, or All Souls Day (properly November 2nd).  In Mexico and nowadays throughout the US Southwest, it's the time when families feast by the gravesides of their dear departed, especially enjoying their loved ones' favorite treats.  They also create altars to celebrate those they have died, and for both last and this year in RE we did something similar in the Children's Chapel.

We began with the classic picture book by Judith Viorst, called  "The Tenth Good Thing About Barney" a cat who had died and whose young owner was sad.  Then we gave everyone simple cards on which to write the name of someone or a pet they wanted to remember, and with the lines below printed up to glue inside.  This led to a simple ritual around our Altar of Remembrance.  When ready,

 each child placed their card and read the name on it aloud, and after each one, we all repeated

"We live in all things

All things live in us"

 Once everyone had spoken, we all said the final lines,

"We are full of life

We are full of death

We are grateful for all beings and companions. "

We sang "Spirit of Life" and finished with a quiet time for remembering -- during which I realized we had forgotten one aspect of our ceremony, which was to also place an apple for "longevity" on the altar with each card -- DARN!  But the apples got eaten later and the younger children enjoyed playing the old singing game of "Old Roger is Dead,"

 involving a corpse/ghost, an apple tree and an old woman who wants those apples to keep her alive.  We acted it out in one big circle, then in groups of three, with lots of laughter, and afterwards the children took home their cards and apples.  I hope they also took a broader perspective on death, having seen it all morning as a part of the cycle of life.

Fall Follows Summer, oh my . . .

Were you among those from UCM who enjoyed Unicamp, near Wasaga Beach, Ontario, this summer? Or did you venture to another Unitarian Universalist summer institution such as Star Island or Ferry Beach on the New England coast, or Unirondack, near Nyack, NY? Each place has its beauty, traditions, spirit of life and fun! Each exudes that special feel of a dedicated group working together to build a beloved community based on UU principles. Other programs meant to deepen our sense of being UU and to grow lay leadership are CUUL School and the youth equivalent Goldmine -- both very structured, yet also enormously fun! (both programs currently being updated). Beyond the specific UU world there are also wonderful learn-and-share places like the Chatauqua Institution in western New York (with lineal descendants across the continent), or Omega, in the Hudson valley. Of course there are also yoga, fiddle, wilderness, singing and sports camps. Myriad ways in which our ever-inventive fellow humans seek to create an ideal, loving, knowledge-, skills- and growth-promoting environment. At all these grand places, all kinds of people -- from "lions" to "lambs" -- explore dwelling together, coming together for a brief time, briefer than we might in our more permanent homes. Over the decades I have participated in many of these temporary "homes," for longer or shorter spells. Lately I have been struck by how much common ground there is among these summer communities, despite variations of theme, cost or location. Attendees share the summer weather and the desire to foster our best selves, our biggest dreams of new abilities or adventures, and optimal relationships with one another and the natural world. From the time my children were small and into their teens, our family would spend an annual ten days or more at NeeKauNis, a Quaker camp on Georgian Bay in central Ontario. Over that period we experienced different groupings of camp programs like "Family Camp" (predominance of small children), or "Community Camp" (including singles as well as three generation family groups), or camps for pre- or young teens. Often I helped direct one or another -- a mixed bag job, rather like being a D.R.E.! All the camps shared a relaxed pattern to our summer days: some self-created programming, three wonderful meals prepared by a head cook (many years that was me!) with a raft of volunteers, waterfront time to swim, canoe or sail, and every morning after chores, a half hour of meeting for worship. We sat on the hill above Georgian Bay, immersed in nature and silence, and often there was spoken or sung ministry to amplify our joyful sense of community. In my book, The Heron Spirals, I recount one such camp experience: "...watching some little children play quietly nearby, I thought about the way the camp experience nurtures them all, how we all share the parenting. Next, I pondered the question of whether my husband and I had ever fully allowed, let alone truly encouraged, each other to stretch ourselves to be our most whole selves. I thought we seemed to have succeeded with our son and daughter, but hardly ever as partners.      Then I felt a prayer rise in me, that we adults may help each other, and each young one especially, stretch his or her wings fully, that we not inhibit, but enhance one another. I felt this longing very deeply, and wide-winged heron images flooded my mind, almost as if they were surrounding me in Spirit, vividly present although not physically visible." Years later, reading Marriage and Other Acts of Charity by Kate Braestrup, the Unitarian Universalist chaplain and author, I found these words: "Love really has just that one absolute, implacable demand, ...to desire the achievement of wholeness by the beloved." I trust your summer has been rich with your own sense of wholeness, wherever you have spent it! I look forward to working with our children, youth and Religious Education staff and volunteers as we, too, grow in wholeness. P.S. My own summer has had many wonderful heron, "camp" and book moments of wholeness, following all the support this community offered me in June --and before! For copies of The Heron Spirals: A Commonplace Book, please contact me.