The 60-Second Sabbath

Halloween: Mystery

Halloween offers appreciation for the mysterious, that which lies outside of logic and reason. This is, in fact, an important and necessary function of religion; embracing mystery and the inexplicable reflects healthy spirituality. Not everything can be--nor needs to be--sorted out, rationalized, categorized and compartmentalized. Life is full of paradox, incongruity and mystery. Relax and enjoy it.

People of faith believe that there are events that lie outside of rational explanation, in the existence of spiritual reality invisible to us--but impacting us--minute by minute.

Halloween reminds us that there is more to life than meets the eye.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 

Halloween: Embracing Mortality

 

It's autumn. The earth turns away from the sun, and the days shorten. Winter lurks, shivering and lonely, just around the corner. Trees abandon their leaves, turning inward, bracing themselves. The plants we so carefully cultivated throughout the summer shrivel with each night's lowering temperatures. We drain the fountain, cover the lawn furniture, mulch the garden. It's ending and we feel it; the darkness creeps closer. We close the doors and windows, light candles, draw together around the fire, literally or figuratively.

It's ending, and it's a reminder to each of us that we are ending too, no matter our current age or health. We are mortal. One day, distressingly soon, we too will shrivel, release life, turn inward and be gone.

To acknowledge this is a good thing. Realizing that we don't have unlimited time makes us grateful for the time we do have and for those with whom we share it. Living in these moments--this one! this next one!--makes life all the richer now.

This Halloween, celebrate your mortality! Raise a glass to the certainty...but not the finality...of death!

 

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 

Halloween: Hospitality

"Trick of treat!" I remember cold Halloween nights when my siblings and I trick-or-treated back in my hometown in Michigan. With either my mother or my aunt following behind, we'd run door to door through our neighborhood and those beyond, excited by the possibility of being, for just a few hours, someone else--a ghost, a cowboy, a hobo, a pumpkin-headed something. The wind blew, the leaves scraped down the sidewalk, the bare branches of trees swept the moon as we made our way from house to house, like tiny bandits, making off with the loot! It was magic. It was the nighttime, past-your-bedtime, anything was possible magic, and that made it all the more thrilling. We were bolder behind the imagined anonymity of our costumes and masks and the unaccustomed rush of sugar, by the freedom granted us by the genious who invented this remarkable holiday. We owned these darkened streets, scented with smouldering leaves.

And amazingly, dozens...scores...hundreds of people opened their doors to us, dropped handfuls of candy into our bags or buckets. What a remarkable thing! What hospitality! This was like Christmas, but not just for friends and families--for everyone! All you had to do was ring a doorbell and shout "Trick or treat!" and the door opened, and boom! treats! (or, occasionally and with some disappointment, a box or raisins or an apple). This was grace, dropping underserved and unearned in a paper grocery sack or an old pillowcase.

Meanwhile, back at home, my father sat in the living room, waiting for the doorbell to ring, repeating this same ritual for the kids who stopped at our house. It took several years to realize my father was another dispenser of Halloween candy-grace, while I was out harvesting it from others.

Back then, it seemed as if the entire town opened their doors to strangers for this one evening. We gave away our Dum-Dums and Smarties and Tootsie Rolls with abandon, without concern for who recieved them. A goblin, a demon, a skeleton, a vampire--such riff-raff!--all were treated the same.

So come on in, whomever you are behind that mask.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 

 

Halloween: Facing Fears

What scares you? Halloween invites us to identify and sit with our fears. What are yours? Here's a checklist, drawn from my life, past or present:

Do you fear death? the afterlife? a big empty nothingness the other side of death?

Do you fear being alone? Do you fear silence? Do you fear what you might learn of yourself alone in silence?

How about aging? Are you afraid of losing your looks? your mental acuity? your physical strength and skills? the attention you attract? Do you fear being old without someone to support or care for you?

Do you fear poverty? the loss of your job? the loss of financial stability?

Some people fear God, or they fear the possibility of no God. Some fear the loss of faith or long-held beliefs, of being adrift in a state of uncertaintly and ambiguity. And then there are those who are afraid of someone else's faith, of things they don't understand.

Do you fear someone you love? Do you love someone you fear?

How about ghosts? Are you afraid of the ghosts of your past? your regrets? your mistakes? the memories of lost love? of opportunities missed?

Do you fear not being taken seriously? not being respected? not being heard? not having a voice? Are you afraid of being overlooked? of not contributing, not making a difference?

Do you fear the loss of status? loss of esteem? loss of security? loss of certainty? loss of identity?

Do you fear the nastiness that you know lurks within you that you hope no one ever sees?

What do you fear? And do you need to?

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

  
 

Halloween: Remembering the Dead

Most cultures around the world have festivals honoring or remembering the dead. Why is this?

Is it to maintain our ties to the past, to acknowledge how we got here and to whom we owe gratitude and respect?

Perhaps it's to remind ourselves of our own mortality. We won't be living forever, and we gain wisdom once we acknowledge that. Are we at peace with this reality?

And all these stories of ghosts and the undead, while entertaining, may also encourage us to consider, just a bit, the afterlife...our afterlife. What do we believe? What do we hope follows that final breath, that final beat of our heart? What can we do to answer these questions for ourselves?

In Mexico, El Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the dead) is celebrated by picnicking at the graves of loved ones. It's a party, not a funeral; families celebrate life and the future, building on the love and memories carried forward from the past. So with that in mind, a toast: Here's to my mom and dad, my sister Nancy, my grandmothers Ash and deVries, to Evelyn and Bill and Katie and Rita and all those EC/MCC friends who died of AIDS in the 80s and 90s. Here's to what you taught me! Here's to the life you helped me build! Here's to paying attention, releasing the ego and living to the fullest!

Happy Halloween!

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

Halloween: Ghosts

The woman believes in ghosts.

She believes in ghosts because, each night around two in the morning, she sees them. They enter her bedroom, and, in the dim light from the streetlamp halfway down the block, she makes out their familiar features:

Her mother, pinched and sour, eyes heavy-lidded with age, arthritic hand raised before her to make her point. She never speaks, but the woman knows the point she makes: whatever the woman has done, it's not enough; whatever effort she's making, she must make more; if she washed her hands, she missed the backs; if she washed the fronts and the backs, there's still dirt under her fingernails. Never enough.

Her father, tall, stern, scowling, aloof. Why does he even come? He never cared in life, why in death? He also does not speak, but his silence is different; he speaks not, because he does not believe she's worth speaking to. Each night, he gives her only the briefest glance, then turns toward the window, fades into the white of the curtains.

Her husband, gently round, with thinning hair and half-glasses, a look of concern on his face. When he appears, he steps to the bed. He sits, and she imagines she feels the bed yield to his weight as it once did. With a wave of his hand he dismisses the mother's raised finger and the father's scowl. His hand comes to rest over his chest, where once his heart beat. She knows, even in death, even in stillness, his heart is still hers.

She smiles. She closes her eyes. She sleeps.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 

 

The Love of Snow

It is snowing--big, wet flakes coming out of a gentle, quiet, gray sky. There's no anger in this snowfall, nothing being whipped, thrown or driven. It's simply snowing. It's snowing simply.

This snow invites: "Watch me," it says. "Enter me; tilt back your head, open your mouth and try to catch me; let me land on your eyelashes...lips...nose. I collapse into water drops on your cheek; I become a tear. I tickle. I kiss."

This snow loves and accepts any upturned face willing to stop, to be silent, to receive the love of snow. Any face. Mine. Yours.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 

Drawing Lines

When we draw lines to separate ourselves from those who are different, from those whom we don't understand, what we're really doing is protecting ourselves from our own weakness, fear and failure.

But our weakness, fear and failure unite us with others. These shared human experiences bind us. Not everyone today will know acceptance, affirmation and love, but all of us will stumble, trip and fall...emotionally, intellectually, spiritually.

And precisely because of our weakness, fear and failure, we need these (seemingly separate) others. They offer what we are missing. They may be the ones who catch us.

The very thing we do to protect ourselves keeps us from wholeness. We are all pieces in the same divine jigsaw puzzle. We are all ingredients in the same delicious recipe of transcendence.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 
 

To See with the Eyes of the Divine

In an often-quoted passage from the writings of Thomas Merton, he relates the following epiphany, experienced while standing on a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky: "I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, ...even though we were total strangers. It was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed..."

This has happened to me in Denver on several occasions, all within the last few years. It's a challenge to put into words: I saw the people I passed on the street and in their cars as startlingly beautiful, no matter what there age, shape or dress. I wanted all good things for them. At that moment, any one of them could have been a best friend to me. I knew them, and knowing them, I loved them. I wanted to hear their stories; I wanted to know each network of complex and meaningful relationships. I knew the immeasurable worth of each. I felt humbled and connected, liberated from judging, sweetly released from the need to evaluate. We were one.

This gift, brief and occasional--to see God in others; to see with the eyes of the divine.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 
 

 

There Are No Grown-Ups

It took me until some time in my 40s to finally realize this: There really are no grown-ups.

As a kid, of course, you think your parents are grown-ups (at least, if you've been raised in a normal, marginally functional family, as most of us have been). You believe the way your family does things is the right way, the norm, the way everyone should do it. You trust that. Certainly, you think, my parents are grown-ups.

And while your mother and/or father are the first line of understood grown-up-ish-ness, you assume the same thing about many other adults in your life, like your teachers, your priest, rabbi or pastor, the mayor of your town, parents of friends, the policeman who patrols your block, your Girl/Boy Scout leader, the lady behind the counter at the soda fountain... You assume most adults around you know what they are doing, have it together and possess the knowledge base and life experience from which to function effectively. And likely, you imagine one day you'll be just like that. In fact, you hope for that.

And then, at some point, it dawns on you: Your parents have never been grown-ups. Nor have any of the other adults you've looked up to. And neither are you. Everyone one of us, no matter our age or life experience, continues to be human, which means uncertain, insecure, petty, selfish, immature, limited, ignorant about most things...

That's not to deny the good in us--the compassion, love, kindness, resilience, creativity. These qualities are real and wonderful and worth celebrating. Thank God for them.

But the fact remains, there are no grown-ups. No one actually has it together. No one is free of the frustration, the pain, the confusion, the doubts, the questions that come with being alive--not politicians, not clergy, not military, not management, not me, not you.

Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.