Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Honoring Our Ancestors

 

Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern
October 29, 2006
Palo Alto, CA

Those who have died have never left. The dead are not under the earth.

— Birago Ishmael Diop, Senegalese poet    

Sermon

In this week of the year, death runs gleefully through the streets. People turn their front yards into mock-graveyards, sometimes spooky, sometimes funny. Ghosts trail from porch roofs and skeletons dance in the windows. Pumpkins are carved to look like bodiless heads.

And this holiday of death is a holiday especially for … children. What’s that all about? A holiday about death for kids? Not that adults are very comfortable with talking about death either — actually, probably less so than children are — but adults’ discomfort about death increases exponentially when children are part of the conversation. Childhood and death seem like opposites.

And then there are the Days of the Dead, los Dios de los Muertos, with their festive skeletons and smiling skulls … you would think it was a party. It is a party. What’s going on? Why does Death, the great feared darkness, dance in our streets at Halloween and the Days of the Dead?

Los Dios de los Muertos, especially the second day, November 2, is a celebration because on this day we honor our ancestors: relatives, and also others who have enriched our lives. With altars and offerings of sweet food and flowers, we invite their spirits to come close. We are sad that these beloved people are no longer alive, but we aren’t afraid, and our greatest comfort comes from keeping them with us in some way. Halloween has different origins, but the lightness of its celebrations is trying to communicate something very similar: ghosts are nothing to be afraid of.

Have you ever met someone who has been visited by the spirit of someone they loved? Or maybe it’s happened to you? I am very skeptical and rationalistic about life after death. Everything that I would call a soul — our thoughts, our memories, our feelings, our sense of humor — the intangible aspects of what makes a person a person — all of that seems to me to disappear the moment the body dies. But I keep an open mind on the subject because I have heard stories from people whom I know to be very rational and skeptical themselves.

One person told me about being visited by her mother who had died a few months before. “It was just like she was sitting in the room with me. We talked a while, and then she disappeared.” Another felt the presence of the son who had died the day before in a sudden and shocking way.

Now, when people tell me these stories I feel prickles along my spine like when I’m watching a creepy movie. Weren’t they scared? I ask them, “How did you feel?” And not one has yet said, “I was afraid.” They say, “It was wonderful … it was reassuring … it was like hearing her voice again.” They aren’t afraid — they are happy to have the spirit of someone they love with them again, for just a little while.

Whether or not something like that has ever happened to you, I think you probably have other ways that you eagerly keep the spirits of the dead alive and present. Maybe you light a candle on the anniversary of their birth or death, or visit their grave. Maybe you take time now and then to think about them in that sad-happy way of memory.

How many people here have a first name or middle name that was chosen to honor someone who is now gone? How many people here have pictures of beloved, now dead people on our walls or in our photo albums? And almost all of us take our last names from long-gone family members, carrying on their names, giving them a piece of immortality. We could each choose a new name with each generation, but in this culture we seldom do. We want our history, the people in our past, to come along with us.

And we reflect on the ways they are with us every day. “I’ve got my grandfather’s green thumb,” we’ll say. “My mother taught me cooking — she loved to bake and so do I.” “Every time I read my favorite book I think of my high school teacher, who introduced me to it.”

Even after people die, something essential of them remains with us. “The dead are not under the earth … They are with us in the home. They are with us in this crowd.” And so we celebrate, and bring them close in memory. And this is why both Halloween and los Dias de los Muertos are the perfect holidays for children.

Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal Dreams describes a fictional, mostly Mexican-American town in Arizona. Every child in town comes along on el Dia de los Muertos when the families visit the graveyard. What are the children doing there, in this place of death on the day of the dead? This passage says it all:

There were an infinity of distractions: Calaveras, little skull-shaped candies for children to crack between their teeth. The promise of a chicken leg for a kiss. Little girls and boys played “makeup,” standing on tiptoe with their eyes closed and their arms at their sides, fingers splayed in anticipation, while a grownup used a marigold as a powder puff, patting cheeks and eyelids with gold pollen. Golden children ran wild over a field of dead great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, and the bones must have wanted to rise up and knock together and rattle with joy. I have never seen a town that gave so much — so much of what counts — to its children. (165)

No wonder the children are part of this celebration. It is not creepy at all, but joyful. And no wonder her fictional town is called Grace: the place of gifts, given without strings attached. We receive so much from the dead, even from those we never knew: music, inspiration, brilliant ideas, inventions that change our lives. And from those we did know and love in life, we still have memories of laughter, we still have the things they taught us, we still have ourselves and all the ways we have been shaped by them. Long after they are gone, their gifts still flow to us. That is why we bring them close to us today, so that we may hug those gifts to us and give thanks. That is why we celebrate.

Now our Worship Associates for today, members of the Purple class, will each tell us about the ancestors they honor, and why. I will light a candle on the altar for each one.

(they share)

Now let us all remember and honor our ancestors: our relatives who are now gone or anyone whose gifts remain with us even though they are gone. If you would like to add a name to the altar, and the reason you honor this person, please do so now as the piano is played.

Meditation and prayer

Through memory, we bring the honored spirits into our presence. Please enter with me into a time of meditation and prayer.

We give thanks for (as many of the names as time allows). We honor them and the many, many others, named and unnamed, whose spirits live on in us and our world today.

Dear ones, we feel your presence in our lives, when (examples from the altar, e.g., “we seek our way as parents ourselves”), when your words echo in our ears and guide us on our way. Thank you for being with us long ago, today, and always. We will keep you alive through our memories and our deeds.