CELEBRATE, HONOR, REMEMBER

Oct. 28, 2007   Rev. Kathleen A. Green

     It felt slightly surreptitious and quite exciting actually.   It didn’t feel sad.  We opened the cracked black leather pocketbook with the metal clasp and peeked inside; giggling.  My grandma and I.  It had been twenty-some years since my great-grandma Flowers had died, and her only daughter, my grandma, invited me into the bedroom to ‘see something special’.  You need to know that children were not allowed in Grandma and Papa’s bedroom.  I had only every really seen the inside of their bedroom from a distance, until I was an adult. 

     Great-grandma Flowers’ pocketbook was just as it had been left when she passed away.  We took things out of the black pocketbook and were flooded with memories.  There were things that I remembered seeing as a child.  And as we surveyed the contents, we remembered Beatrice Flowers.  Together we celebrated her life as we chuckled at the peppermint candy from the Sonic drive-in restaurant where Great-grandma loved to go for a burger and vanilla coke – always ready with a smile to laugh and play.  We honored her life as we held the Sunday bulletin from her tiny country church – deeply dedicated to her faith and the extended family she had there.   And we remembered her for the gifts she gave us and lessons we learned from her, some she wasn’t even aware of.  My ancestor.  My beloved dead.

     Here we are on the last Sunday of October, the last Sunday of my harvest series.  Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve explored the ideas of abundance, reaping, and release.  This week, many of our brothers and sisters in Southern California have been forced to let go of their homes, their sense of safety, their belongings.  We who call this part of the country home, who are affected in numerous ways by the destruction of the wildfires, take this time in the aftermath of evacuations and uncertainty, to consider the brevity of life, and to ponder the abundance of support, compassion, friends, community, and inspiration in our lives. 

     We are not the first to suffer at the hands of fire.  Our ancestors fought fires before us.  They risked their lives, escaped danger (and some were not able to escape), faced fears, stood strong, and passed from this life leaving a legacy for us to learn from.  They are the shoulders we stand upon today and we shall be the shoulders that future generations shall stand upon. 

     Today as we gather ourselves together just as the wildfires appear to be contained and people begin returning home to assess the damage, we celebrate a cultural harvest.  The cultural harvest is apparent in El Dia de los Muertos – the Mexican Day of the Dead.  It is a Christian ritual intermixed with folk culture.  A celebration of love and happiness – not denying grief, but directing our attention to the lives of our ancestors (those who have gone before us).   We create an altar in order to offer love and remembrance to our beloved dead.

     While in our sophistication we might be tempted to view Day of the Dead celebrations, and similar cultural rituals, as primitively morbid at worst or quaint at best, UU minister Peter Morales cautions us,

“If we dismiss the Day of the Dead as pure superstition, we can easily miss the profound spiritual and psychological insight that makes this tradition powerful.  A Mexican boy spending the night at his uncle’s grave has a connection across time with his forebears.  While we dwellers in a technological age are connected to the World Wide Web, cellular phones, and cable TV, (while we) have message machines, voice mail, pagers, and call waiting, we have cut ourselves off from the web of time.  Traditional cultures have understood intuitively something we’ve repressed:  the dead don’t die; they live on.”

    Every loss we experience in life is a reminder of that ultimate loss to come, the loss of our very life.  No matter how rich or poor we are, no matter how talented or inept, no matter how happy or miserable, we all must die.  It is the inevitable.  Ironically, the one certainty in life is,…death!  And just as there is a relationship between birth and death within our own lives, a harvest and release of its own kind, there is an important connection between the life of one generation and the lives of the ones before and the ones after. 

     Today we would not mimic the Mexican tradition but draw from its wisdom.  Let us now honor our beloved dead by lighting candles of tribute and bringing to this altar our tokens of celebration, honor, and remembrance.

(Ritual of placing on the altar momentos of our beloved dead, in order to celebrate, honor, and remember their lives.  Flowers are available for those who did not bring something.)

   We light the first candle to beckon our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents – all the ancestors to whose love and care and sacrifices we owe our very existence.

     We light the second candle for other family members who have gone before us – spouses, partners, children, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces – and give thanks for the richness and love they provided in our lives.

    We light the next candle for ancestors of another kind, for those who have given life to our hearts and to our minds – for friends and confidantes, teachers, mentors, writers, and sages; for scientists and artists who imparted knowledge and wisdom that outlives their earthly existence.

    We light the final candle for our spiritual ancestors – for all those who have taught us the values by which we live, who have encouraged us to question and doubt, who call us still to work for justice, who have given us confidence in our own spiritual worth and the worth of every creature.

     This is memory, history and molecular biology.  The DNA of your ancestors is alive in you.  Look at your children and grandchildren and see yourself and your ancestors.  Think of the decisions made by your parents and grandparents.  Their choices shaped your life.  And the choices we make every day shape the lives of those to come.  The interconnections stretch across time.

     This is what el Dia de los Muertos reminds us of, and this is its power.  A simple ceremony of remembrance to put us in touch with our place in time and our mortality; reminding us that to live is to create a legacy that endures for generations.

     Bendijo sea y amen.    Blessed be and amen.