This is my annual updated version a holiday variously known as the feast of Saitn Bridget, Imbolc, Oimelc (both Celtic words related to lambing), and Groundhog Day. I mentioned that the first of February was the only holiday devoted to housecleaning in an email to my daughter. Aha, she said that explains the backstory for the movie Groundhog Day. It’s like house cleaning. You clean, it gets dirty, you clean it again, it gets dirty again… A good story line for a movie! At least my repetition, unlike the movie, is only once a year.
Imbolc, Oimelc, or Groundhog Day, they all anticipate spring. It is one of the lesser-known cross-quarter holidays on the Wheel of the Year. In addition to Groundhog Day it survived as the feast of the purification of the virgin (Mary) after the birth of her son 40 days earlier. It is also the day devoted to Saint Bridget or Brigid. Bridget is the Triune Goddess in her maiden phase, converted to a Christian saint. The corn maiden from the previous harvest is brought out in her honor as a virgin once again, ready to encounter the Sun King reborn at Yul in a mating ritual of spring.
The purification part of this holiday was known in pre-feminist times as spring house cleaning. In ancient time among the Celts, Imbolc cleaning consisted of removing the Yule greenery from the home and burning it, cleaning up fields and home, and in Ireland, burning old Bridget wheels and making new ones. By Imbolc, most of us have taken down the tree and put away the decorations from Christmas, but if you haven’t, you can use Imbolc as the excuse for delaying it till now. After Imbolc, you are at risk of being labeled a lazy pagan if you don’t deal of the winter holiday residue.
Imbolc is approaching the end of an indoor time. It’s cold and still pretty dark, but it is the waxing period of light and warmth following the winter solstice. It represents a final stage of wintry inwardness before the crocuses and daffodils invite us to look outward again. Housebound, we must find our spiritual practice within that space. It is the late stage of the hibernating season as we prepare for the cycle of life to begin again.
Spiritual practice has enjoyed something of a resurgence in recent decades. A spiritual practice is anything that is centering, mindful, focusing, and connects you to the sacred in a very inclusive sense. Practicing patience with difficult people is a spiritual practice. Listening attentively is a spiritual practice. Eating mindfully is a spiritual practice. Meditation and prayer are traditional spiritual practices in many religions. But there is also a form of spiritual practice that invests the ordinary activities of daily life with significance in the way carry them out.
The essence of spring housecleaning as spiritual practice blends several Christian and Buddhist ideas. One is humility; no task is too menial that we are above it, as in Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. The second is mindfulness, to be engaged in the moment, to calm the monkey mind, to focus all our attention on the window being washed or the floor being swept. The third is letting go of attachment to possessions as an encumbrance on our spiritual life, passing them on to another use or another user. The spiritual practice of spring housecleaning can incorporate all three.
Housecleaning means two different things. One is the emphasis on clean, as in wash windows, polish furniture, remove cobwebs, paint, scrub floors, clean woodwork, dust the books. That’s both the humble and the mindful part. In the words of one contemporary Buddhist writer, “after enlightenment, the laundry.” The other kind of housecleaning is to declutter, simplify, recycle, let go of possessions no longer needed, like the greens from Yul in the Celtic tradition. That’s the letting go part.
For many years my Lenten practice, for the forty days that begin sometime after Imbolc and stretch to the floating holiday of Easter, was to wash a window every day. Then I moved to a smaller house, which taxed my ingenuity to find forty windows. I included car windows, TV and computer screens, mirrors. Friends helpfully offered their windows, but I did not wish to discourage their own spiritual practice. There is something very satisfying, very symbolic in letting the light of the returning spring shine through a clean window, but it means more when it’s my window.
A friend described a similar cleaning ritual, only she does it all on New Year’s Day. She takes each of her many books down one at a time off the shelf, dusts it (and the shelf), and decides whether it stays or goes. If books are a rich and meaningful part of your life, revisiting these old friends and deciding what role they still may play in your life and which ones should be shared with others is definitely a spiritual practice. This particular ritual embodies both humility (dusting). mindfulness (concentrated attention on the books and the memories and teachings they hold) and letting go (books to be passed on). This year I used my cocooning season, December 26th to February 1st, to declutter bookshelves, which led to one empty bookcase and about 80 book donations, plus a major cleansing of my Kindle.
So, as the daffodils and crocuses pop their leaves through the ground, as the groundhog in Punxatawny ponders his forecast, we can prepare to emerge from the hibernating season by renewing the spaces we inhabit. Like the bluebirds, whose house I have to clean very soon because they refuse to return to a used nest, let us be about the humble tasks of maintaining our habitats. Spring housecleaning only comes once a year!
Category: Uncategorized
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Day of Service
This year, ironically, the start of the second reign of Donald Trump coincides with both the national college football championship and Martin Luther King Day. I’m betting that more people will watch the football game than the inauguration. But the real contrast is between how we observe the other two events, Inauguration Day and the Day of Service, that many of us observe in honor of MLK. Many communities will have organized service projects that will, alas, overlap the noon inauguration. For me, that’s an easy choice..
But I like to honor the day of service my way. So I chose this week, the week of his actual birthday (January 15th), because I don’t believe in forcing actual dates of a holiday into the nearest Monday. And instead of a day, I will do something each day from Monday through Friday.
Today I am speaking to the county legislative delegation about making the state’s local governments more accountable and transparent rather than evading or ignoring the legal procedures they are required to follow. Advocacy is one form of service.On Tuesday I plan to take my blind friend and neighbor to the grocery store and the recycling center. Care giving is another form of service. I will also try to recruit a college student to help her with transportation. Care giving is another form of service.
On Wednesday, I am making my share of dinner for about 25 residents of a local homeless shelter, It is a monthly service organized by my congregation. Helping the less fortunate is also a form of service.
On Thursday I get paid, so it is a good time to go to my favorite charity website and give some money for Gaza and California. Money can be a vehicle for service. I am also attending a Zoom meting with updates on what is happening in the state legislature that we might want to discuss with our legislators. Advocacy again.
On Friday I will tend to my duties for the two organizations through which I channel much of my service, The League of Women Voters and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Service is more effective and more satisfying when done within organized caring communities. I serve the fellowship as Social Action chair and the League as program chair. Both communities are dedicated to making the world a better place in many ways. Serving in leadership roles sustains the organizations through which we can engage in service more effectively.a
The point of this recitation is not to tell you what a good person I am, but to be mindful of what I do and why I do it. It is also meant to illustrate the variety of things that I choose to do, while others among you may have totally different but equally valuable ways or serving the larger community. I hope that this day will make me more intentional about carrying through this commitment the other eleven months of the year.
Celebrate your day of service in ways that reflect your unique challenges, opportunities, skills and interests.
Happy New Year
This is, of course, not everyone’s New Year. The Chinese New Year is in February, the Jewish and Celtic new years are in the fall. On the old calendar, April First was New Year’s Day, at least in what is present day France. There is a new school year every fall for those who are students or teachers. The nine month academic year at Clemson University, where I taught for 50 years, began on August 15th, so one August 14th I had a New Year’s Eve party.. For each of us we can observe a personal new year on the day after our birthday. Since I was born on June 30th, every July 1st is truly the first day of the rest of my life but also of my life-year.
Western culture’s choice of a New Year falls at the start of the month named for the Roman God of doorways (Janus). He has two faces, one facing in, one facing out, of forward and backward if you prefer. It is a time of starting over. An odd assortment of events and celebrations marks this late point in the solstice season—football, New York ball drop, parties, resolutions, fireworks, and in the south, eating fatback, collard greens and black-eyed peas. I did that once. Not my favorite menu, but supposedly they will bring abundance and wealth in the year to come.
Here is a poem for this holiday
The morning light comes sooner now
We wake in hope to a new year.
Janus the two-faced God
Invites us to look back
But also forward, a fresh start.
We try, succeed, or fail
And try again.
These turning points in the heavens
Remind us to be mindful,
To pay attention to our lives
To savor joy, to grieve enough,
To let the dead past bury I dead.
And rise this New Year’s morning
To embrace life again.
Boxing Day and Economic Justice
Boxing Day is a largely but not exclusively British tradition of gift-giving to the poor after Christmas Day. Some sources trace it to the medieval obligation of the lord of the manor to provide certain necessities each year to his peasants and serfs. It was not charity but duty, including cloth, flour, and other necessities of life. Another tradition is to empty the tip jar at commercial establishments and divide the money among the firm’s workers. In both cases, it was not charity but earned cash or goods, much like the Christmas bonuses that many firms share today.
Both traditions exist side-by-side. In fact, it is now observed more as a shopping day than a giving day, although both can be combined. The notion that the profits of the firm should be shared with the workers who made it possible is less and less popular in our winner-take-all free market society, but the Christmas bonus is a remnant. In the 19th century, the practice of emptying the church alms box on Boxing Day (also known as the Feast of Saint Steven) and Victorian influences shifted the emphasis to post Christmas charity as the coldest days of winter were just beginning.
Both of these kinds of giving and receiving are issue of economic justice, the only holiday for which that is the primary focus. What do we owe to those who earn low wages doing essential work, or to those unable to support themselves? A poem for Boxing Day
A Holiday for Justice
One day a year we follow feudal Lords
In earned and festal sharing of the wealth
Created by many, but possessed by few.
It is not a time of charity
But limited admission that
Abundance is the work of many hands.
In modern times, earned sharing seems to be
A voluntary act of charity
Begrudged when it is often fairly earned.
What do I woe? To whom is payment due?
Our what do others deserve but not receive?
Justice is not charity. May we
All receive more than we deserve,
And in gratitude, pass it forward.
First Day of Christmas
For many of us it may be the last day of Christmas. But in Colonial times and beyond, Christmas Day itself was a solemn religious holiday, followed by eleven days of parties and celebrations of various kinds. It passes through New Year’s Day and ends at Epiphany, traditionally the date of the visit of the three kings or three magi, depending on your preference. For me, the first day of Christmas is fairly quiet. My family, or most of it, has come and left after much food, gifts, conversation, board games, home repairs by my son-in-law, and general being together.I spend the rest of the aftermath days until the new year reading some of the many books and doing one of the many jigsaw puzzles I always get for Christmas, un-decorating, and walking in the winter wonderland.
Two poems for the after days,, the first from Howard Thurman and second from me.
The Work of Christmas
When the song of angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas beings:
To find the lost
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among the brothers,
To make music in the heart.
Christmas 2024
The Christmas myth is rich and warm
Amidst the bleak of winter.
A baby, humbly born
Yest destined to become
A guide unto the nations.
Shepherds, angels, kings
A star in the East
All come to welcome him.
And so we celebrate—
Family, like Mary, Joseph and Jesus
Community, like shepherds, angels and kings
Gifts given, gifts received
Like modern day Pandoras,
A year ago we opened
A box labeled 2024
It was a hard and fear-filled year.
As we approach its end
We celebrate the gift of hope
That casts out fear and welcomes joy.
Welcome Yule
A popular expression among some Christians is “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Yes, there is a connection, but The season is the reason why the choice was made to celebrate the unknown date of his birth at this particular time of year. Before Jesus, there was Saturnalia, and Diwali, and Hanukkah. The common thread is the holiday that falls this Saturday, December 21st, the winter solstice, known since ancient times as the festival of Yul or Yule. It celebrates the shortest day and the longest night of the year as the northern hemisphere turns away from the sun..
In Celtic and other traditions, the story goes something like this. The Sun God is born at Yul and grows to manhood. His companion through this travel in the Triune Goddess, maiden Bridgid, Mother Danu, and the crone, who has various names. He courts the maiden in spring, and she becomes pregnant with the sun god. At summer solstice the sun is a the peak of his powers and the goddess she is radiant with a child in her womb. The Sun God begins to decline and dies at the winter solstice even as a new sun god is born. The crone is renewed as the maiden, and the cycle begins again. Or at least, that’s ‘the mythical story that underlies the holidays that enable us to reconnect with he rhythms of the turning year.
Here is a solstice poem:
This ancient holiday
Marks ending and beginning
The seed is still beneath the earth
Preparing to emerge from its cocoon
At Imbolc or beyond.
Yule calls us to take rest in darkness
To hibernate, reflect, and be prepared
To bloom once more.
Let us not hasten through
These cold short days
Spring will come soon enough.
There is no spring without winter
To prepare us or rebirth.
Let Me See
I am a member of the silent generation. I think we World War II babies just got lumped into the Silent Generation, because we weren’t so silent. We were in college in the sixties along with the first batch of the Boomers, and we did our share of protesting and demonstrating. As we grew older, the challenges we were addressing didn’t get much response until those challenges started hitting the Boomers. Birth control. Menopause. The glass ceiling. Equal pay for equal work.(Yes, I’m sure the guys had issues, but gender issues were petty hot in those days.I can only speak for my own gender on health issues!),
For the past ten years, as my ability to read the fine print or thread a needle or see well enough to drive at night has diminished, there was no response from the larger society adapting to our needs. But now that the Boomers are having the same challenges (both genders, except maybe the needle part), perhaps we will see some awareness that changes are overdue.
Here is my list of grievances around which I wish to peaceably assemble (during daytime hours) and seek redress as I am promised by the First Amendment. Well, it promises I can complain. It doesn’t say anything about fixing things.
- Low contrast signs, pictures, etc. My congregation has a lovely tasteful sign outside. It is painted beige with white lettering. Most people can’t read it, not just old people, but sharper contrast does keep us reading longer. Hey guys, if you are looking for patrons or customers or employees, consider the legibility of your signage.
- Shrinking print size on everything from cooking instructions of foods to operating manuals to instructions of taking medicines, both prescription and over the counter. In case you haven’t noticed, those people with deteriorating eyesight are among your biggest customers.
- Night driving, night meetings, SUV headlights string at us directly in our smaller, low to the ground vehicles. I know that big hulking SUVs are already not designed with consideration for those who share the remaining space of the road, but car designers and insurance companies might have an interest in headline design that cause episodes of blindness in oncoming drivers. And voluntary organizations might want to consider offering more daytime gatherings, events, etc. for that age group who are often the bulk of their market. Matinees. 5 pm meeting instead of 7ish. It’s not just the night driving, it’s also a tendency among my fellow octogenarians and their trailing septuagenarian Boomers to feel their energy droop at the end of the workday or former workday. I have seen some signs of awareness of time-of-day issues in scheduling events, but it’s only a trickle so far.
Is this a government issue? Maybe the car safety and the print size on drugs. But shouldn’t the market be responding to consumers? Is there any competition left? Instead of big meals or big Macs or big bargains how about offering customers or members big signs (with contrast) and big print?
Oh, for the golden days of my youth when I did battle to allow girls to wear Bermuda shorts on campus and protested the war in Vietnam. I know I should be saving the earth and making it safe for democracy, and I do my best, but I could do better if I could drive safely at night and read the fine print.
Fact, Myth, Truth and Santa Claus
Fact, Myth, Truth and Santa Claus
Thursday marked the beginning of a long season of our individual and collective reaction to cold and dark. Some of us want to cocoon. Some will party until tomorrow starts earlier in the day. Some of us suffer through seasonal affective disorder and get depressed. So it is no wonder that we have more stories, songs and holidays that we observe to fend off the cold and dark until light and warmth return. In case you didn’t start counting, Thanksgiving is followed in rapid succession with the spending holidays—Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday if you have any money left. A short break interspersed by family, friend s and organizational parties and parades until we reach Christmas, Boxing Day, football tournaments, New Years Day, Epiphany or Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and ends with the Superbowl and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc with the first signs of spring. In between are holidays from other traditions, Hanukkah and Diwali in particular.
It is unfair to the season not to tell retell the old myths, while at the same time it is a challenge for those among us who don’t connect with the myths, just the facts, ma’am. Life invites on an endless search for truth and meaning. Sometimes truth is meaning, sometimes truth is facts, but the best truths are those that emerge from the marriage of myth and fact.
Most myths are grounded in some facts or experiences. Consider Santa Claus. The original Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He supposedly put gold coins in the stockings of three virtuous young women so that they might have a dowry to find a husband and avoid the possible life of prostitution. These are the facts, more or less. Elves, reindeer, chimneys, those are myths. The truth that emerges from fact and myth is the spirit of generosity, an understanding that the world is or should be a safe and loving place.
Small children are concrete thinkers and having a concrete embodiment of faith and hope and love and kindness and generosity that works until…like Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are forever changed. When they recognize that the facts don’t square with their experience, or their logical brain. Some discard the myth and are angry with their parents for a while for misleading them. Others cling to their faith despite all the evidence to the contrary. Out of this experience we hope there will arise an appreciation of myth and the broader horizons that come with accepting myth as a carrier of meaning.
The central myth of the season is the story of Jesus’ birth. Fact: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. But it had to be Bethlehem, because it was important to the myth, emphasizing Jesus as a continuation of the House of David. The registration for tax purposes that sent a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to deliver was NOT a fact.
Jesus was certainly born in a Jewish family and preached and taught and was crucified. Those are facts. Angels, shepherds, wise men, manger, are embellishments. They are myths. Myth is a carrier of deeper truth, the lessons taught in parables, the bearers of inspiration and hope in a time or darkness, not just winter. Jesus was probably born at some other time of year, but winter had other advantages when the church chose a date to celebrate his birth. December was a way of connecting the Jesus story to the experience off birth and rebirth and hope to the solstice winter Yul myths. It was also a time of year when the despair among God’s chosen people over the Roman oppression coincided with the cold and dark of the winter season. Jesus was the original Christmas present.
The other gift bringers are myths, probably even more mythical than the nativity story and the Santa Claus story. Most of Europe, including the British Isles, has a gift bringer. La Befana I Italy. Mother Holle in the ancient British Isles, Father Christmas in more recent times, the Three Kings on Epiphany in Hispanic cultures.
Drawing a strict line around fact, truth, and myth as three separate entities will oversimplify the rather complex painting of the world we live in, whether in our bodies or in our heads. Biblical literalism is a prime example. If the Bible was dictated by God and is inerrant, then it represents a God many of us can’t related to or identify with. But when we discard it as irrelevant, we throw out the baby with the bath water. Our right brain resonates with the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, Ruth and King David, the Maccabees and Jesus and the apostles.
Myths are not just religious. We have myths in our culture, as do most cultures. Johnny Appleseed. George Washington and the cherry tree. The peaceful gathering at Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. All of them embody facts, real facts, not alternative facts, but embellished by imagination to provide a picture that conveys a truth, an insight into how we think the world is or should be. We still call the appearance of the sun in the eastern sky and disappears in the west as sunset and sunset, even as we learn at a fairly young age, that the motion is that of the earth, not the sun. It is a fact that we see the sun appear on our horizon, but it is a myth that it rises and sets.
The season or darkness, cold, and myth is upon us. While every season has its myths, the winter has more as we sit by the fireplace and retell the old stories…Oops that is so 20th century. Update: when we turn on the TV and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch, or It’s a Wonderful Life. These modern myths carry the same messages of hope, and faith, and love, and a light beyond the darkness. May this be a season of hope and joy, of reflection and renewal, for each and every one of my readers.Thursday marked the beginning of a long season of our individual and collective reaction to cold and dark. Some of us want to cocoon. Some will party until tomorrow starts earlier in the day. Some of us suffer through seasonal affective disorder and get depressed. So it is no wonder that we have more stories, songs and holidays that we observe to fend off the cold and dark until light and warmth return. In case you didn’t start counting, Thanksgiving is followed in rapid succession with the spending holidays—Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday if you have any money left. A short break interspersed by family, friend s and organizational parties and parades until we reach Christmas, Boxing Day, football tournaments, New Years Day, Epiphany or Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and ends with the Superbowl and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc with the first signs of spring. In between are holidays from other traditions, Hanukkah and Diwali in particular.
It is unfair to the season not to tell retell the old myths, while at the same time it is a challenge for those among us who don’t connect with the myths, just the facts, ma’am. Life invites on an endless search for truth and meaning. Sometimes truth is meaning, sometimes truth is facts, but the best truths are those that emerge from the marriage of myth and fact.
Most myths are grounded in some facts or experiences. Consider Santa Claus. The original Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He supposedly put gold coins in the stockings of three virtuous young women so that they might have a dowry to find a husband and avoid the possible life of prostitution. These are the facts, more or less. Elves, reindeer, chimneys, those are myths. The truth that emerges from fact and myth is the spirit of generosity, an understanding that the world is or should be a safe and loving place.
Small children are concrete thinkers and having a concrete embodiment of faith and hope and love and kindness and generosity that works until…like Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are forever changed. When they recognize that the facts don’t square with their experience, or their logical brain. Some discard the myth and are angry with their parents for a while for misleading them. Others cling to their faith despite all the evidence to the contrary. Out of this experience we hope there will arise an appreciation of myth and the broader horizons that come with accepting myth as a carrier of meaning.
The central myth of the season is the story of Jesus’ birth. Fact: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. But it had to be Bethlehem, because it was important to the myth, emphasizing Jesus as a continuation of the House of David. The registration for tax purposes that sent a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to deliver was NOT a fact.
Jesus was certainly born in a Jewish family and preached and taught and was crucified. Those are facts. Angels, shepherds, wise men, manger, are embellishments. They are myths. Myth is a carrier of deeper truth, the lessons taught in parables, the bearers of inspiration and hope in a time or darkness, not just winter. Jesus was probably born at some other time of year, but winter had other advantages when the church chose a date to celebrate his birth. December was a way of connecting the Jesus story to the experience off birth and rebirth and hope to the solstice winter Yul myths. It was also a time of year when the despair among God’s chosen people over the Roman oppression coincided with the cold and dark of the winter season. Jesus was the original Christmas present.
The other gift bringers are myths, probably even more mythical than the nativity story and the Santa Claus story. Most of Europe, including the British Isles, has a gift bringer. La Befana I Italy. Mother Holle in the ancient British Isles, Father Christmas in more recent times, the Three Kings on Epiphany in Hispanic cultures.
Drawing a strict line around fact, truth, and myth as three separate entities will oversimplify the rather complex painting of the world we live in, whether in our bodies or in our heads. Biblical literalism is a prime example. If the Bible was dictated by God and is inerrant, then it represents a God many of us can’t related to or identify with. But when we discard it as irrelevant, we throw out the baby with the bath water. Our right brain resonates with the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, Ruth and King David, the Maccabees and Jesus and the apostles.
Myths are not just religious. We have myths in our culture, as do most cultures. Johnny Appleseed. George Washington and the cherry tree. The peaceful gathering at Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. All of them embody facts, real facts, not alternative facts, but embellished by imagination to provide a picture that conveys a truth, an insight into how we think the world is or should be. We still call the appearance of the sun in the eastern sky and disappears in the west as sunset and sunset, even as we learn at a fairly young age, that the motion is that of the earth, not the sun. It is a fact that we see the sun appear on our horizon, but it is a myth that it rises and sets.
The season or darkness, cold, and myth is upon us. While every season has its myths, the winter has more as we sit by the fireplace and retell the old stories…Oops that is so 20th century. Update: when we turn on the TV and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch, or It’s a Wonderful Life. These modern myths carry the same messages of hope, and faith, and love, and a light beyond the darkness. May this be a season of hope and joy, of reflection and renewal, for each and every one of my readers.
All Saints Day
We, the living, are keepers of the memories
of those who came before
We all had parents, teachers, siblings, friends
Who are no longer present
But will live on as long
as we remember them.
We share the memories of good people
Who made a diffeer3nce in our common life
Great men and women whose prophetic voices
Called all back into covenant
With earth and fellow humans
and all living things..
Remembrance is our yearly payment
on the debt we owe
to those who blazed the path
on which we tread.
.
Hallowe’en Nostalgia
The darkness begins
The faces of carved pumpkins
glow from lighted candles.
Children ring the neighbor’s doorbell,
costumed, in search of treats.
Or so it once was.
Today this holiday is sanitized for “safety.”
Fear of the dark is banished
by noisy crowds on sugar highs
costumed not as ghosts and devils
but TV characters and superheroes..
Without the fear and mystery of darkness
Without the silence in which to hear
the voice of nature once again
How can we claim our rightful role
As partners, not overlords
Of the turning earth?
PurpleSage41 