The Mexican celebration of El día de los muertos honors loved ones who have died, not with black shrouds and mourning, but with a colorful celebration featuring bright orange marigolds, colorful paper cut-outs and sugar skulls that are meant to be eaten. Death brings painful loss, but when we accept it as a natural part of the cycle of life then it becomes easier to invite the ghosts and skeletons who surround us to the party.
Whose memory will you celebrate and welcome today?
Happy Halloween! Or should that be “Scary Halloween!”? Somehow it seems odd that we have a fun, child-centered holiday about spooks and ghouls and the spirits of the dead, but there’s a lot to be said for trying to find joy in the midst of fear.
How can you turn a trick into a treat today?
On Halloween we scare ourselves with skeletons, and as the trees lose their leaves we may think the bare branches ominous or dull. But there is also beauty in the bones of things, in the spare shape of the structures at the center.
In times of loss, have you found beauty in the essentials that remained?
“Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by,” read the words on the tombstone of Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Most of us would cast a cold eye on death, but on life? Does a passionate love of life make it harder to let go at life’s end, or does it make it easier, knowing that you have fully embraced what was given to you, for however long it was given?
How do you live so that you can meet your eventual end with grace?
Have you ever picked up a fallen chestnut or walnut, and peeled back the husk to find the nut beneath? Without experience you would never know that a glossy chestnut would hide under that prickly green skin, or that a walnut was lurking under the unattractive green and black husk.
What experience that seemed off-putting has yielded a pleasant surprise?
