First Parish Unitarian UniversalistDia de los Muertos 2003
A service led by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
November 2, 2003
Meditation for Dia de los Muertos
I invite you now into a time of meditation and prayer. Sit with your body relaxed, legs uncrossed, feet on the floor or a stool. Close your eyes and feel the breath, breath of life, enter and then leave your body. Listen to your breath…
At this time of year, we are conscious of the passing of time, the passing of autumn. Last weekend we turned back the clocks and gained time. This weekend autumn passes before our eyes as leaves falling from the trees. We are conscious of the passing of time, the passing of autumn, and the passing away of those we love.
This is Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, and All Soul’s Day in the Anglican and Catholic Christian traditions. Friday, their antecedent in the pagan calendar, Samhain (sah-win) was celebrated. These days, the autumn air is hazy, mist hangs over the fields in the morning and shrouds the streetlights at night.
Autumn's hazy air reminds us of the thin veil between life and death. How the presence of deceased loved ones can sometimes be felt in an empty room or in the words of a song on the radio or in an encounter with someone who bears a strong resemblance. And then the presence fades.
In the passing of time and the passing of autumn, something in the air reminds us of the ultimate passing. How death can come momentarily without notice…or come ever so slowly over many months or even years. Thoughts of our own mortality and that of those we love flicker in and out of our consciousness; loved ones now gone are missed. Our sorrows and losses– past, current and future– resonate.
And, so, let us pause for the ancient tradition of honoring our ancestors. Let us dwell in shared silence together, to remember the dead, to call upon our memories of loved ones, people as well as pets, family and friends, mentors, heroes and heroines.
In a few moments, there will be an opportunity to place a memento or light a candle in honor of a loved one and to speak their name aloud.
In remembering those who dwell with us no more in mortal form, let our memories call to mind those of their qualities that live on in those who loved them.
Silence followed by Musical Mediation
Invitation to the Ofrenda
I invite you now into our own rendition of this Mexican tradition, according to which the spirits of the departed return to earth to visit their families and friends on the Day of the Dead. To welcome back their loved ones, people construct colorful altars in memory of those who have died, placing on them objects of importance to those being commemorated or photographs, as well as signs of the season or cultural significance.
In the next moments, those who wish may come forward with a memento in honor of a loved one or to light a candle if you don’t have an object to place on the altar. After, if you wish, you may speak the person or pet’s name into the microphone. To signify this person’s ongoing presence in your life, the congregation will respond to each name spoken with the word “presente!.” Like a roll call, by calling out “presente!,” the congregation witnesses to the fact that each name spoken evokes at least a complex set of memories for the one who speaks it. Naming may also evoke a sense that the spirit--the essence, nature, character, or qualities--of the person or pet is present with us in the naming and the remembering.
Homily “So You Will Be”
Before I became your minister, my family attended First Parish in Arlington, MA which is situated next to the town cemetery, much like we are here in Canton. One Sunday, when my daughter was eleven or twelve, her Religious Education class went out into the cemetery. Now a junior in college, she can’t quite remember what the purpose of the venture was: to read the gravestones, look for prominent names, make rubbings, or get the kids outdoors and wear off some energy?
We all do remember that she came home that Sunday with an epitaph that fascinated her committed to memory. She proceeded to copy it onto the piece of foam board you see on the altar today. Ever since, come Halloween, this gravestone is displayed at our house for the benefit of the trick-or-treaters who come to our door.
Stop and look as you pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so you will be
Prepare for death and follow me.
The parents of pre-schoolers are happy for some stimulation while they wait for their young ones to make it up our steps, ring the bell, get their treat, maybe say thank you, and negotiate the steps down again. The younger readers are too focused on getting their candy to notice the gravestone. But, the middle-schoolers often stop to read it aloud.
I like to listen for their responses. “That’s creepy!” “That’s weird.” “I saw that epi… —how do you pronounce that word??— epitaph in Salem.” “Gross.” On Halloween Night this year, one young person exclaimed, “I’m not ready to die. What about eating all this candy?!!”
Is it possible to prepare for death?
In planning the general idea for today’s service last summer, I did not know that I would have an unexpected encounter with the possibility of death in the meantime. Not my own death, but my best friend’s, who was diagnosed with Leukemia five weeks ago. As we, her loved ones, faced the shock and anxiously waited to see if the initial treatments would abate the killer symptoms, I was not in any sense preparing for her death. But, after she survived the first few days and started the chemotherapy, the reality of her grave situation came to me and I experienced an afternoon of terrible grief mixed with an even more terrible guilt for even thinking she might die. It was then as if this brief heartfelt preparation for the worst freed me to put all of my energy, hope and love toward supporting her survival and cure.
In planning the general idea for today’s service, I did not know that I would have the honor and privilege to minister to a family as they prepared for a loved one’s death. It was the family of a life-long (80 year old) Unitarian who had recently been moved to a nursing home in Canton. As the Unitarian Universalist minister in town, her husband called me to see if I would visit with her. He would be there. “Maybe you can say something of comfort to her, and to me. I’m there with her all the time,” he said.
Of course, I agreed. But, on the day before the visit, she was moved to Norwood Hospital. Not a week later, she died. In the intervening days, I visited the hospital several times and witnessed an extraordinarily loving, multi-generational family prepare for the death of their loved one.
Two things struck me about this family. First was the love. It seemed to be deep and real, and very much reciprocated between them across the generations and within them too. Though there were differences in temperaments, interests, religious beliefs, age, and status in life, their love bonded them. With great care, they queried and listened to each other about the difficult decisions at hand: treatment or palliative care? Hospice in her own home, at the nursing home, or at a hospice house?
The second outstanding thing about this family was their practice of “doing the right thing.” They recounted difficult decisions in the past ten years since a stroke left the woman unable to speak. About each decision they said, we felt “it was the right thing to do.”
It was habit, with them, to ask, “what is the right thing to do?” Not “what do I want, above all else.” Not, what would be easy? Not, “well, last time we did this your way, and the time before we did that his way, so now I think we should do it my way.”
This past week, the right things to them were: she shouldn’t have to suffer, the hospital is not the best place for her to die, at least one of us should be with her when she dies, and Dad’s needs are the most important after Mom’s. Even the 18-year-old grandson spoke from the heart about what he felt was right for “Grammy.”
If we can do anything to prepare for our deaths or that of loved ones, it is to develop loving relationships with our kinfolk and to make a practice of doing the right thing all along.
Theoretically, it’s never too late to create love in our families. Sometimes a crisis like preparing for death brings love out where it wasn’t before. But, I daresay that it’s far better to tend to the hurts, regrets, losses, angers, and fears that keep us apart from our families and friends before death brings us together. It would be almost as difficult to start the practice of doing the right thing at the end as it would be to start loving at the end. Better still is to do both, life-long.
“As I am now so you will be, Prepare for death and follow me.”
Dia de los Muertos, with its Aztec roots and its adaptations to Catholicism, offers another, less serious, way to prepare for death. The way of laughter. Rather than fear death, this Mexican tradition teaches us to laugh at it, to make fun of it. The skulls and skeletons on a real ofrenda are meant to be zany and humorous, not to frighten like on Halloween.
During Day of the Dead festivities, when the calacas or grinning skeletons dance with the children, it’s not about being led off by the Grim Reaper. It’s a fun and crazy dance, making fun of death, taunting it, saying that life itself is a dance with death. All our lives, we are courted by death-- death by accident, illness, or random act of violence. It’s a crazy dance we do with death, all of our lives susceptible to it.
I must say that laughing at death doesn’t come easily to me. A good cry would be more suited to me, not a good laugh. My way would be to anticipate and fear the grief and loss I will feel upon the deaths of those I love. Likewise, my way would be to anticipate the grief and loss my loved ones will feel at the time of my passing, and fear for their sorrow.
Many a good cry, and the passage of time, helped me to come to peace with my own father’s death years ago. I don’t recall laughing at death in the face of its imminence, not once. Nothing then seemed at all laughable.
But, after he died, later that day, my siblings and I took the grandchildren to the playground in Dad’s car. It was equipped with electronic verbal reminders, to our surprise because a feature like that didn’t seem at all Dad’s style. But, it delighted the kids.
Well, one of the reminders was “your door is ajar” and there were peals of crazy, relief-making laughter from young and old alike as one of the kids demanded to know, in all innocence, “how could a jar be a door?”
In that laughter, the healing began. Death became part of life. His death became part of our lives, and we found this his love and our love for him lived on in us. Dia de los Muertos teaches many things, not least among them that death is a part of life, not life’s opposite. As the dead are now, so we will be.
Doing the right thing will take us there most peacefully. And, love will, evermore, have the last word, outliving even death in this dance we call life. Amen, and so it is.