Dumbing down, Hallowe'en and the Dead

When did
the celebration of the
Thin-ness
of the
Veil-between-Heaven-and-Earth
become an orgy
in throwaway plastic
and
unbelievably bad taste?

The Day of the Dead in
Mexico,

All Saints
(with its eve, All Hallows' Eve,
now known as Hallowe'en)
and All Souls
in Christian tradition,

and Samhain in Celtic tradition,

all coincide
with that change-of-season feeling of
"everything's different now."

The veil between Heaven and Earth
is said to be at its thinnest,
we ponder issues of mortality and
remember the dead

- some we have made into "saints"
- others we mourn
- some we may even be pleased they've
"left for good."

Have they left for good?

When the veil thins
so does our hold on what is real.
What is the truth?

In this modern age we pay much attention to
political crises, wars, economic situations,
medical breakthroughs, third world disasters
and the like,
going deeply into the whys and wherefores.
We let our television news
form our days, taking each crisis
with us into daily life.

But life in the media-news-version
is not much fun,
so we buy ouselves out of misery,
or watch anything that will
lift us for a moment out of the creeping fear
that would enrol us in its march.

The result?

A tendency to live at the extremes

- either a life lived in fear of the "real"
and desperately seeking ways "out"
to bring about something better that works,

- or inanity.

We're either crying and fighting or laughing stupidly.

Times like the Days of the Dead
pull us out of this see-saw for a moment.

What we are instead led to experience
may well give new perspectives
unlimited by television news,
and uninfluenced by what malls would have us buy.

Not easy. Not easy at all.

Questions like
Why am I here on Earth?
What is the point?

Perhaps it's easier to make a joke of this time -
"it's all just a bit of fun"

- and help companies who are totally
without any sense of beauty or artistic taste,
make money out of gaudy plastic,
("ecological" plastic that they assure us
will shrink and wither with age.)

The same happens at Christmas, but
Christmas has been so overlaid with other feelings
from sentimental to "duty and service" that
the plastic is the least of our worries!

It
takes courage
to go deep

and to plunge
the mysteries of
Life and Death
and our
intimate connection
with them.

But all this IS
a matter of life and death -

for this planet,
for each of us personally.

Niceness doesn't count for much
when faced with such questions.

And orange plastic imitations of pumpkin faces
won't get us any closer to truth,
though perhaps they may
remind us that it is
in one anothers' faces that we may see
reflections of deep truth
and a reminder of
who we ourselves are.

Have you ever looked deeply
into another's eyes unflinchingly
for 20 to 25 minutes, and seen
how the worlds become revealed to you,
new spaces in the other that you
never knew?

It is a scary and wonderful thing.

Even if we can't resist buying the plastic,
let's take this Allhallowstide
as a time
to see more deeply into one another
and use this wonderful body we have
to make contacts of another kind -
of acceptance and love.

We may even find that we start to
forgive
and even understand the
"unforgiveable" and perhaps
even thank those we were pleased had left us
for what they gave.

That is a gift which will not
shrink with age.

And it will
open the veil between
Heaven and Earth.

Blessings

John O