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Church on Loan Does your small Unitarian Universalist group need resources? The CLF offers programs that include complete worship services, easy-to-teach religious education programs, and study guides to expand opportunities for adults to interact. For information about either the Church on Loan or CLF International—which provides online resources for UU groups outside the US—including sample resources, an online application and fees, go to www.clfuu.org/smallgroups.html or contact Beth Murray at bmurray@clfuu.org or 617-948-6150.
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Did You Know? ...the CLF provides complete RE lesson plans to use with kids at home or in your small group? Contact bmurray@clfuu.org for more info about CLiF Notes.
DAVID A. PETTEE, MINISTERIAL CREDENTIALING DIRECTOR, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION
Although many of us tend to think very little about the importance of memory, either personal or collective, memory is basic. The remembering of stories is essential for the survival of cultural folkways, where we pass on our history, our values and our aspirations. The elders in my family passed forward a love of family history, and made sure to pass on stories they wanted me to remember. As I came of age in the 1960s in a suburb north of Boston, I didn’t realize that I was being fed a romanticized version of history. This memory of our past, cultivated during the Victorian era, grew out of the anxiety that the New England way of life was fast disappearing. The emergence of much of the mythology of the Pilgrims, for example, comes straight out of this era.
One of the unexpected gifts that came with the explosion of the Internet is that family history research has become so much easier. In early February 2006, after I upgraded my Ancestry.com subscription, my long-revered New England heritage was turned upside down. With access to more records, I found that the 1774 Rhode Island Census was searchable online. I typed in the name of an ancestor who I remembered lived in pre-Colonial Newport. I couldn’t believe my eyes: four enslaved Africans were living in his household. A trip to the Newport Historical Society revealed further shock: eight more ancestors owned more than thirty slaves.
This news came without warning. These family stories had been long forgotten, or worse, suppressed. Although I didn’t know it at first, I had crossed over a threshold onto an unpredictable pilgrimage that continues to this day.
My growing curiosity urged me to learn more about another Newport ancestor, a ship’s captain. It wasn’t long before I found John Robinson, his name recorded in a slave ship manifest. He had sold 102 gallons of molasses to a Newport distillery. Over time, I confirmed that John Robinson had sailed from Newport (and Boston) several times to the Gold Coast, now present day Ghana. In Africa, he sold rum for Africans and then set sail back on the Middle Passage to the West Indies. While in Jamaica, Robinson sold these Africans to purchase molasses, before sailing back on the third leg of the triangular trade route to Newport.
John Robinson participated in the enslavement of some 500 Africans between 1730 and 1746. I refer to him to as “the bad man” in our family— not only because he was engaged in a dehumanizing trade, but also because he was a cheat. I only know as much about him as I do because he kept getting hauled into court. One angry mother sued him because her son had been denied wages owed from a voyage from Newport to Africa and back. In another memorable case, the great-great-grandfather of William Ellery Channing sued Robinson for overspending a credit line in Jamaica.
Outside of buried official public documents, the records of folks like my ancestors were often suppressed. This denial of history was common in New England, not coincidentally after the slave trade was abolished in 1808. Then, during the Civil War, a more calculated cultural amnesia began to take root, motivated by the need to portray the North as morally superior to the South. The fantasy of a free New England was created. The reality of generations of slavery was forgotten.
This pervasive mythology persists. My daughter recently went on a field trip to a museum to learn about working conditions at the dawn of the industrial age. I asked her if the guides talked about where the cotton used in the New England textile mills came from, who picked it, and the circumstances in which the cotton pickers lived. The complicity that directly connects the mills to slavery by the use of cotton wasn’t mentioned. The nineteenth century economy of New England was fueled by collusion with slavery. In 1844, Emerson referred to this complicity in the use of slaves to harvest sugar. He observed, “The sugar they raised was excellent; nobody tasted blood in it."
Early on, I decided to be open with what I was discovering, hopeful that bringing the story into the light might serve a larger purpose. Getting started was a challenge. There aren’t that many people who are publicly willing to acknowledge a similar legacy. One of the critical conversations I did have was with a prominent African-American historian from Newport. As I shared with him what I was doing, I immediately began to sense his impatience. He urged me to resist the temptation to be satisfied with just uncovering my own history. Instead, he inspired me to become just as familiar with the stories of “creative survival” of the people of color who shared a common history with my family. He challenged me to try to find a descendant of an African enslaved by my family, so I might more fully understand accountability.
The full scope of this painful and embarrassing legacy began to become increasingly clear. I knew that I needed to return to the scene of the crime, to face first hand what was keeping me up at night. This meant a visit to Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, on the coast of West Africa, where John Robinson had bargained rum for enslaved Africans. Much of what I experienced remains quite palpable. Someone recently asked me if this was “soul work.” Yes, I answered, but most of the time it felt a lot more like root canal.
While preparing for our trip to Africa, I found myself meditating on three questions: What is the role of repentance in Unitarian Universalism? What kind of rituals exist within our faith that would support me to safely enter into a deep and disturbing spiritual place? What would I do with what I learned?
When I am quiet, I can still recall the sound of the surging surf, pounding the rocks beneath Cape Coast Castle. For a time, this building lay at the heart of the largest involuntary diaspora in human history. From the outside, instead of feeling sinister, the prevailing mood of this whitewashed structure is suspiciously sterile and bureaucratic. The tour started with a descent into the dark and cramped dungeons that served as holding cells for thousands of captured Africans before they were forced to endure the Middle Passage. Over a century, nearly a million Africans were placed in these dungeons, all bound for the same purpose: to cross the Atlantic to serve as slaves. Marks where people tried to scratch their way out were on the walls; the pathway ahead led to the “Door of No Return” where those souls who survived this imprisonment were loaded onto canoes and then onto ships in chains.
We ended the tour in the palaver, the room where negotiations for lives took place. I shuddered when I realized that I was standing in the same room where my ancestor had traded rum for human beings. I could look out the same window and see the same things my ancestor would have seen more than two hundred forty years earlier. The eerie sense of timelessness left me alternately numb and sad.
My faith assures me that the act of re-memory can be like the natural cycling of water, forever seeking to return whence it came. After the tour, my wife Mindy and I made our way down to the beach. I took out a bottle I had brought from home and poured out sea water I had collected from Narragansett Bay. Feeling the presence of my own ancestors, I prayed that this water would be received back into the sea, ever moving, ever merging with other bodies of water, with the spirit of humility and repentance that represented my deepest apology and sorrow. I committed myself to remember that repentance without real resulting action would be a mockery of good intentions, adding further insult to the memory of those whose lives were destroyed by my family.
While in Africa, when I spoke with people who wanted to know why I had come to Ghana, I sensed their appreciation that I had chosen to make this journey as real as possible. One woman said to me, “it must be a hard thing for you to see this place (meaning the slave fortress). But if we all keep looking away, in another place and time, this kind of evil will occur again.” Her comment encouraged me to reframe interdependency in a way I hadn’t considered before: as a living dynamic that travels across space and time, where the lasting effects of actions made generations ago simmer not far below the surface.
Finally, I took seriously the challenge to find a descendant of an African who had been enslaved by my family. In May, after having used the same genealogical tools to recover my own heritage, I was able to find and make contact with a descendant. We met and talked about the meaning of our common history, filling in some gaps in our shared story and finding new understanding. After the visit, I was asked whether I sought reconciliation, an action commonly linked with the promise of truth-telling. I think reconciliation is not mine to seek, nor request. Time will tell. My attempt at reparation involves sharing the full history of what I have learned about their first generations of Rhode Island ancestors. I have placed my faith in being willing to remember what happened, warts and all, trusting that nothing of any lasting value can grow without first honestly acknowledging the truth of our shared history.
I did not know what I would find in Africa, either in the slave dungeons, or in the recesses of my own heart. Unitarian Universalists don’t speak of “conversion” often. But at least for me, I know of no better word to describe my transformation. I will testify that the most unexpected consequence of this pilgrimage is, paradoxically, the deep and empowering sense of liberation I now feel.
-Liberation from the hesitation to engage deeply in the work of racial justice. -Liberation from the fear of making a mistake, or saying the wrong thing. -Liberation from believing I know the right way to do this important work—after all, who am I to judge another? -And liberation from my own emotional and spiritual captivity that came from feeling overly responsible for the atrocities committed by my own flesh and blood.
While I can’t change the past, I have made a deeper commitment to work with others to change the future. As a middle-aged white man, this is how I plan to spend the inheritance I did not earn, but which came through the privilege associated with the color of my skin.
If my experience is of any value, I now know there is an antidote for the feelings of hopelessness that can come with the difficult racial justice work that our religion calls us to do. We must be willing, in community, to keep searching for the truth, wherever it might lead.
JOHN CRESTWELL, MINISTER, DAVIES MEMORIAL UU CHURCH, CAMP SPRINGS, MARYLAND
A judge in Baltimore Circuit Court recently ruled that barring same sex couples from being married is unconstitutional and denies them the guarantees of equality that the federal and state constitutions afford. The higher courts are now looking at the issue and the fight continues.
Yes, it really is a fight. I choose my battles carefully because we all have only a measure of energy and time. We must be careful about what we take on because a fight is taxing and cumbersome—and stressful.
I received a telephone call several weeks ago from the Rev. Phyllis Hubbell, a retired attorney, who is now co-ministering with her husband John Manwell at the UU Church of Baltimore. She left me a message. I did not respond. She e-mailed me. I did not reply. She e-mailed me again. I began to realize she was serious. I called, left her a message. She called me back, left me a message; finally I caught her on the phone. She explained the situation to me and I realized this was not trivial: I needed to pay attention. Without her saying the words at all, I realized she wanted me to get into the fight, and that the fight needed a person of color, male, heterosexual, who is also a minister, supportive on the issue of same-sex marriage. As you know, there are not many Black preachers who are supportive on this issue. I guess I fit the bill. But even so, I was still reluctant to give my heart to this apparent call.
I seek spiritual guidance to direct my path. It’s hard for me to explain these days, but it is an intuitive instinct I have trusted for a very long time. My father-in-law, a Methodist minister, has always been one to “wait on the divine call.” In fact, he tells me he never sought a job in his ministerial life; the jobs sought him (of course it helps to be in the Methodist’s guaranteed appointment system). But either way, he depends on God to direct him. He would say to me, “If God calls you, you’ll know it and you must go.” Well, I can say to you that I wait on the call from humanity, and when a message comes to me I go with it, trusting my heart will guide me.
Years ago the call came to Dr. King. And if you know the story, he never wanted to be the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. The movement came to him. As a new minister, just arriving at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, all he wanted to do was be a good minister, good husband and good father. By the luck of the draw, or some say divine intervention, his church was chosen for a meeting among local pastors to discuss segregation on buses in Montgomery, Alabama. In the meeting, King was unanimously chosen as the spokesperson for the eventual bus boycott. At first he said, “No. I just got in this town.” But the group of ministers persisted. He reluctantly accepted. The rest is history.
My mentors’ examples teach me that I have to be patient and wait, and let the fight come to me. There is no need to force any situation. But when the call comes, I must accept it humbly, and go. To be honest, I did not expect fighting for the rights of same-sex partners to be one of my calls, but you never know what you’ll be called to do when you accept the challenge of ministry.
My first experience defending same-sex marriage came a week later at a press conference that I didn’t know was going to happen. And my second experience with this issue was at a lobbying session in Annapolis dealing with House Bill 48. It was there, in my second experience with the issue, that the call went from my head to my heart.
As I sat and listened to those who supported the bill, I was troubled as I discovered again that there are so many people who hide their fears and insecurities within their religion. More than that, when the opposing side (my side) began testifying and responding to the delegates’ questions, I was appalled as I listened to the hecklers behind me. We were quiet when they spoke, but they were rude when we spoke and they said some nasty things like, “You might as well marry your dog if marriage is not between a man and woman,” “You might as well marry your sister or your mother or your grandmother if marriage is between two individuals.” The absurdities continued and people yelled: “It’s forbidden in the Bible.” Later on when I spoke and mentioned that my church had theists and agnostics and atheists too, they said, “What kind of church is that? That ain’t no real church!” I was quite angry at this point and could not believe I was in a government office; I thought it was the Spanish Inquisition relived or something!
I began to see that their fight was my fight. I began to feel the same anger I felt when I experienced racism first-hand. I knew at that moment that this struggle would become a part of my ministry. My friend Phyllis called me on the telephone, but the real call came right there in the heat of that moment.
The call, for me, shouts from the mountaintop that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” That’s what Dr. King believed and that is what I believe. I realize that comes with a price. My mother has taken a little heat. A few members at the Methodist Church where I was reared asked her, “What is John doing?” She said one person asked if I were gay. I went to teach at Potomac College after they aired a five-second clip of me on the local news, saying I support same sex marriage, and one student said to me, “Professor, have you lost your mind?” He knows how much I love Dr. King and he said, “Dr. King would not support same-sex marriage.” We debated awhile and respectfully agreed to disagree.
Another student said, “They always want to take the focus off of Black folks and put it on somebody else.” I had to think about that more. I think I know what he meant. As an African-American he was speaking for many who do not believe the fight for civil rights for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender communities can be paralleled with the struggle for civil rights in the Black community. Let me say this: oppression is oppression—discrimination is discrimination—injustice is injustice. According to the Equality Maryland brochure, when we look at “civil rights” in America, it refers to those “protections and privileges of personal liberty given to all U.S. citizens by the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.” These are guarantees of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The slavery system denied Blacks their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Because federal and many state governments don’t recognize love between same-sex couples today, denying them over 1,000 benefits that come with marriage, these couples, too, are denied their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Most who are heterosexual never think about the benefits you get from being married. Examples: access to Social Security after a spouse’s death, access to health insurance through a spouse’s workplace, the right to custody of children after divorce or death, visitation rights for non-biological children, ability to file joint tax returns and the tax breaks that come with that, the ability to live in a neighborhood deemed “families only,” access to fostering or adopting children, and in some cases, assumption of a spouse’s pension after death. The list goes on and on and on. As I said, injustice is injustice, suffering is suffering, oppression is oppression and discrimination is discrimination. On this issue, I want to stand up. I’m choosing sides. I’m choosing the side that I believe Dr. King would have chosen. I’m choosing the side that Coretta King chose, I’m choosing the side that Julian Bond chose, I’m choosing the side that Bill Sinkford chose, and I’m choosing the side that Unitarian Universalism has chosen: I choose to STAND ON THE SIDE OF LOVE!
You see, somewhere I read that ALL people are created equal. Somewhere I read that there is worth and dignity in all creation. Somewhere I read that God’s love is unconditional, or, as we say in my neighborhood, “God don’t make no junk.” Somewhere I read that real “love is patient and kind and not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It hopes all things and endures all things.” It is the kind of love that loves because of our differences, not just in spite of our differences. It is the kind of love that unites and celebrates life, NOT the kind that divides, conquers and destroys life. It is that kind of love that embraces instead of erases.
We have to stand up on the side of love and say that we believe in the worth and dignity of all people, no matter their sexual orientation. If we believe we are all family on this planet, then whenever humanity calls to us, we stand up and say with power and conviction that denying folk their inherent rights as human beings is wrong!
If we do this, I do feel we will speed up the day of peace on earth. We have the power!
LINDA LU BURCIAGA, CLF NOMINATING COMMITTEE CHAIR
The Church of the Larger Fellowship Nominating Committee seeks CLF/CYF members to run for positions on the Board of Directors for the year beginning June 2008:
- Directors (four) for three-year terms - Treasurer for a one-year term - Clerk for a one-year term
Board members set CLF policy and approve the budget. The Board meets in Boston twice annually and periodically by conference calls.
The CLF also seeks to nominate one member for the Nominating Committee, a three-year term. The Nominating Committee nominates new Board members for election. Most of its meetings are conducted by telephone and email.
For more information, including frequently asked questions, visit www.clfuu.org/boardofdirectors/nominating. You may nominate yourself or another CLF/CYF member for any of these positions. Please contact the CLF office at nominating@clfuu.org or 617-948-6166 with your nominations.
LISA KIELT, DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Yesterday, my six-year-old and I chased after the random coins that had collected in his dresser, in the cushions, and under the bed. After gleefully counting them up, we added them to his bank. And today, we went to church.
In the sanctuary, Charlie wiggled and squirmed, as usual. But then, just in time for the offering, he pulled a dime out of his pocket and gave it to a one-year-old friend, guiding her little hand toward the collection plate. And he then reached into his pocket again and yet again, bringing up handfuls of pennies and nickels and quarters—nearly seven dollars worth—spilling them into the plate with a noisy clank and clatter. He whispered “The plate had many dollars, but I think church must cost even more money than I have to keep it going every week.”
From time to time we do need reminders to give charitably. We need reminders that what we love can cost beyond our own familiar required and immediate expenses. The “virtual” nature of the Church of the Larger Fellowship can be an impediment to recognizing the reality of a budget entirely supported by our members and friends. There is no collection plate. And, while the CLF offers an astonishing array of spiritual resources on a slim and conscientious budget, we do require your support in order to function.
In the coming weeks we will ask members for your year-end support, and we hope that you will demonstrate your commitment to the CLF with an enthusiastic gift. We hope, too, that you will increase your generosity for the upcoming 2008 Canvass. We will be sending you a letter, but you can also give to the CLF by using the enclosed Quest envelope, or by going online at www.clfuu.org.
If you choose to make automatic credit card donations, you will both easily fulfill the mechanics of your charitable intentions and allow the CLF to better predict our revenue stream. We thank you for your continued support.
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Halloween is coming up. You get to decide who you want to be. At least for Americans, that’s a common childhood memory, and plenty of adults continue to “be” someone for Halloween. In mainstream American culture, answering the question, “What are you going to be?” occurs once a year on October 31st. For Unitarian Universalists, it’s a question for every day.
We’re a religion that’s all about freedom. From the very beginning—as early as the fourth century—our theological forebear, Pelagius, denied the doctrine of original sin and taught that everyone has an inherent capacity for making free choices. The ruling Church in 431 condemned Pelagianism, but our little theological thread held on. Here we are today, Pelagians still. The outlook got a boost in the 1600s from Arminius, who again proposed that people have free will—in fact in the early days in Massachusetts, Unitarians were called Arminians. And here we are today, Arminians still. (As my colleague Mark Belletini puts it, “institutionally, first we were Alexandrian Origenists, then Arians, then Pelagians, then Arians again, then Erigenist Origenists, then Free Spiriters, then Antitrinitarians, then radical rational Anabaptist Christians, then Arians again, then Socinians, then Dissenters, then Arminian Dissenters, then Unitarian Christians, then Unitarian Christians again in other countries, then Unitarians, then Universalists too, then Free Associationists, then Unitarians and Universalists, then Unitarian Universalists.)
Any way you slice it, we don’t need “saving”; we can choose to devote ourselves to the best purposes that we can. We are free to decide what we want to be, and not just on Halloween.
This puts the pressure on. If our destiny is not sealed, if we aren’t born in sin, what’s to keep us from our best selves? Where did the excuses go?
Well, there are some qualifiers. Obviously, we are only free to make choices within the confines of…reality. There are economics to consider, and geography, and histories of oppression, and genetics, and luck, to mention only a few factors. Some of us are born with a head start; others have indisputable barriers to overcome. No matter how free I feel, I will not be playing football for the New England Patriots. There’s no way I could write a world-class symphony, nor do I have the nerves or the know-how to rob a bank. But I could choose to run for public office, teach skiing again, or sport a dramatic tattoo. While some among us defy all odds—witness the entry of the Jamaican bobsled team into the Winter Olympics some years back—most of us live where we live and do what we can.
We begin with what we begin with, and whatever the case, each of us does have significant power to “make ourselves up,” to determine not only who we want to dress up as, but who we want to be. Nik Cohen puts it this way in The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll: “Conceive, as a basis, that every life is shaped by two crucial inventions. The first is imposed from outside, at birth and during childhood…, the second is projected from within, as the life picks up momentum, by force of will and imagination. So we begin by being invented and we progress, if we can, to invent ourselves. The decisive element is nerve—how much…do we dare?”
Religiously, we’re talking about more here than bobsleds and tattoos, though admittedly, they’re both plenty daring. When we speak of a religious tradition that embraces freedom, we’re referring to a free life of the spirit: what will you believe, how will you nourish your beliefs, how will you live your beliefs?
I just spent an afternoon in the dentist’s chair. Waiting was involved, so I got a chance to get acquainted with Brian, the dental student assisting. Brian was great. He asked me what I did for a living, and he didn’t flinch when I told him. He had never heard of Unitarian Universalism and he asked probing questions, listening carefully to my answers. Brian is a Mormon.
If the questions at hand are “What will you believe, how will you nourish your beliefs, how will you live your beliefs?” members of the LDS Church and Unitarian Universalists will respond with wildly different answers. Brian seemed to have an easier time of it. What does he believe? Mormon doctrine, of course. The beliefs are listed right on their Web site under “The truth about life’s great questions is now restored.” How does he nourish his beliefs? He spends his time with other Mormons. How does he live his beliefs? Well, his church sets that out pretty clearly.
My own answers included the Unitarian Universalist’s responsibility to develop sustaining, inspiring, ethical beliefs that spur us to action and good will. We are fed by our work in the world, our communities, and our inner lives. We try to act according to the best that our consciences have to offer.
Brian was astonished to hear the extent of Unitarian Universalist freedom. To him we seemed, well, daring. To his credit, he maintained a non-anxious presence, but I could tell he was worried, and I tried to reassure him that it really works out fine.
Many of our congregations sing a hymn that goes like this: “Since what we choose is what we are, and what we love we yet shall be, the goal may ever shine afar—the will to win it makes us free.”
That’s our heritage. That’s the challenge—to figure you who you’re going to be—not only for Halloween, but all the time.
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
What does Halloween mean to you? Candy? Costumes? The chance to roam neighborhood streets in the dark? Do you associate Halloween with the time of year when it starts to get dark early, or with the first cold weather of the year? Do you think of late autumn vegetables like pumpkins? Spooky things like ghosts? Or maybe nothing much special at all?
Would you be surprised to hear that all of those associations with this holiday (well, except the candy) go back to a very old holiday that the Scottish people called Samhain (pronounced SAW-un)? Meaning “summer’s end,” Samhain marked the end of the time to bring in the crops, and so was a time of feasting. Each village would have a big bonfire, and the fire in the hearth of every home would be put out. (Remember, this was before matches, gas stoves and furnaces, so starting a fire and keeping it burning was a big deal!) Each family would then light their new hearth fire from the village bonfire, as a symbol of cooperation and unity between all the families of the village.
Samhain was also regarded as the time when the “veil between the worlds,” the separation between the living and the dead, was at its thinnest. So Samhain was a time when people thought the spirits of those who had died could communicate with those who were still living. In some places it was the custom to include dead ancestors in the feasting, setting them a place at the table, and telling family stories about those who had died. This tradition lives on in the Mexican holiday el Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, which is celebrated at the beginning of November. For el Día de los Muertos, families build altars with items which remind them of loved ones who have died, and with candy skulls, marigold flowers and paper cut-outs of things like skeletons. It isn’t, as you might think, a sad and serious time, but rather a joyful celebration of the connections between the living and the dead.
So how could you go about celebrating Samhain if you wanted to do more than the usual Halloween trick-or-treating? Well, a bonfire won’t go over too well in a lot of communities, especially in the cities, but it might be a possibility for some people. Only if there are adults in charge, of course! However, bobbing for apples is also a very old—and fun—tradition. To bob for apples you need an area, like a kitchen, which is OK to get wet, and a big tub of water. Then all you do is dump a bunch of apples in the water. (Apples are one of the last fruits to be harvested, so they are particularly associated with Samhain and the gathering of the last part of the harvest.) Each person then tries to grab an apple out of the water using only their mouth—no hands allowed!
If you have a vegetable garden, you could celebrate Samhain by picking the last of whatever might still be on the bush or vine. Fruits, nuts or vegetables from your garden are perfect things to put on a Samhain altar, but fall harvest fruits and veggies from the store or farmers’ market will work fine too. Carved jack-o-lanterns go great on a Samhain altar, or if you want to go even more traditional you could hollow out a turnip and then put a candle inside. Since Samhain was traditionally a time of making sure there was enough food stored for the winter, it’s a perfect time to go through your pantry and donate goods to your local food bank so that others will have enough food for the winter as well.
Speaking of food, another fun way to celebrate Samhain is to honor your ancestors by eating food from their countries of origin, or foods that a loved one who has died especially enjoyed. Or you can borrow the Mexican way of celebrating the dead by making candy skulls. Actually, candy skulls are a bit tricky to make, but you can do it an easier way by making crispy rice treats. To do this, melt three tablespoons of butter or margarine in a pan on low heat. When it’s melted, add ten ounces of marshmallows and stir until they’re melted. Then pour in six cups of crispy rice cereal and stir until everything is all mixed together. When it is cool enough to handle, but still warm, put a little oil on your hands, and then scoop out a handful and shape it into a skull. Don’t eat them all before they have a chance to decorate your altar!
Even if the only thing you do for Samhain/Halloween this year is to dress up and collect candy, you can know that you’re participating in an ancient celebration of the time when the earth tilts toward darkness. So if you’re out in the dark on this special night, you might want to pause for a moment to see if your ancestors have any message to whisper to you in your inside ear.
The last tomatoes in the garden are clinging to the vine, doing their best to ignore the change in season. It is my neighbor's garden, and because these are not my tomatoes, I can afford to be philosophical about them.
It occurs to me that the basic strategy of these vegetables is a mistaken one. The biological winners will be those that accepted their fall with grace weeks ago, when the ground was still warm and welcoming. Next year they will be the ones to produce new seedlings.
What is it, I wonder, that keeps these last fruits hanging on? Is it hope? Fortitude? Perseverance? Or just a bad sense of timing?
Timing is essential to the art of living: knowing when to hang in there and when to let go, when to struggle and when to surrender, knowing how to recognize the seasonable changes of our lives. May we be blessed with the wisdom of good gardens.
by Gary Kowalski, from Green Mountain Spring and Other Leaps of Faith, published by Skinner House in 1997 and available from the UUA bookstore (www.uua.org/bookstore or 800-215-9076) or through the CLF Library (www.clfuu.org/library or 617-948-6150.
Last updated September 21, 2007
Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2823 Phone: (617) 948-6166 · Fax: (617) 523-4123 · E-mail: clf@clfuu.org
