Tony Hillerman died a couple of days ago and the tributes for this novelist/detective mystery writer have been numerous. He was a prolific and exceptional writer whose stories were set on the Navajo reservations of the American Southwest. Hillerman died in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the age of 83. Through the years he won many awards including recognition by the Navajo people for his sensitive portrayal of their cultural life and their spiritual traditions.
One of the things I liked about his novels was a willingness to include the mystical nature of Navajo spirituality and the sense that not everything in this life and the life to come is readily explained.
In the United Church we are very "down to earth" in our expression of faith, which is good to a point. But at times we lose that sense of mystery which connects us to a realm we cannot fathom. At our best we are practical, "golden rule" Christians. At our worst we aren't much different from service clubs. Rotary and Lion's do great work, but surely as the people of the Creator of the Universe we can offer something more.
This weekend we will acknowledge that the secular Hallowe'en is connected to the religious All Hallows Eve. It is a time to honour the "cloud of witnesses" which surrounds us and the thin places between this life and the next.
It seems to me that it is essential not to lose sight of what we cannot see, if that makes any sense!
4 comments:
About a year ago I began tracing my ancestry. It has been a very rewarding experience. I found out tons of things about myself, some things I knew instinctively yet couldn't explain, such as my black ancestry, the trail of twins, medical things, and a great great great grandmother known for her "second sight". As I found more and more documents pretaining to my ancestors, I began to move right into their neighborhood, to visit with them in their own time zones, to understand them, and I see their individual contributions to my own existence. It feels as if they have been hovering there all around me waiting for me to look in their direction. What strikes me as most interesting of all is that this experience of delving into the lives of those whose genes make up my own, I can see clearly that I myself am a shadow, when before now I would have thought the other way around.
We look back at our ancestors, and sometimes see them as foolish. I was explaining to my boys about the origins of Halloween. I explained that "in between time" when people feared the dead would cross over into the world of the living and that people wore masks to hide from these spirits and put treats on their doorstep to appease them.
During this scientific and rational age, we tend to see these actions as foolish and think we are much too wise to think that way today. But I think we have lost a lot of the mystery that surrounds us. We have lost the awe and respect of occurrences that have no explanation. Maybe this is one reason so many have pulled away from religion and spirituality. God is not scientific or rational.
Pupil: Very poetic words - "I myself am a shadow." It has me thinking. Thanks!
I agree on the poetic phrase from pupil, Deb. And I agree that we are too ready to discount traditions from ancient times. The Celts used turnips rather than pumpkins to scare off evil spirits during the "thin time" of Hallowe'en, All Saints and All Souls. But they welcomed the good spirits of their forebearers. Check out Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) traditions from Mexico.
All Hallow's Day (November 1) was the Christian version of Samhain,(Celtic feast of the dead). I think it is a wonderful idea to have a day to reflect and think of our ancesters.
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