Comfort in the Darkness

Here we are again, crossing over into the henge-dwelling portal-opening veil-lifting autumn reaching to winter, time of the year. In Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, Samhain marks the New Year when the ever-bursting, blooming, business of life – the seemingly endless promise of always coming forth - finds us at a new dawn, the late dark morning dawn of winter. Now we are reminded that we are the dreams of our ancestors. Samhain, Dios de los Muertos, All Souls, all invite us into the deep river of old memory. Let us intermingle our dreams with the dreams of those who have come before, and those we will never know.

Some observe this time by visiting the graves of loved ones. Going into the twilight and the darkness with candles, favorite foods, a cigar or glass of wine, or maybe a milkshake was their favorite very best thing. Take it, take it and go, be present with the one whose touch you can no longer feel. Memento mori, memento vivere. There is a balm to be found in sitting patiently with the dead and practicing the hospitality of memory. Whose silence, are you?

Modernity, with all its false promises of eternal progress, does violence to our souls in trying to distract us from the inevitable loss. The Irish writer and poet Padraig O Tuama speaks of being aware of “the presence of an absence.” It is a blessing to be able to sit in the presence of an absence, to be honest about the inevitability of disintegration. It will all come to an end, and it will all begin again.

In the compost mound at the abbey we have buried chickens, guinea fowl, hare, crow, fox, and a cat, all fallen to predation, illness, or unknown causes. And I have a vision of them in my mind chasing each other round and round in the steaming heat and comforting darkness of churning earth, feather and bone, beak and claw, all will be renewed – but not as they were. They will be renewed as pumpkins and tomatoes, beans and beets from the scraps thrown on the pile and fed by the composting of life. Above the ground, chickens and guinea hens scratch and peck, chipmunks steal away with food gathered bursting from fat cheeks, and I observe all things of this mound as part of an eternal spiral of transformation and change. We are all deeply woven into the same fabric of decay and renewal. The absence gives way to new presence, new life from the same old stars.

The world is worlding, recycling all the bits and parts, and babies come out the spitting image of a grandparent, or with the bone structure from some great aunt generations ago. And sometimes memories get recycled in the cleansing wash of decomposition, and we contain within us a longing for a place we’ve never been, a place we’ve not known. What a grand symphony we have been born into. My faith tradition of Christianity tells me that God knows when even a sparrow falls. To see with the eyes of God is to see it all at once - every leap and turn of the generative dance, every thread pulled through God’s loom of creation, every birth and death, and it is good. When we have bound ourselves and our planet in what feels like a freefall of destruction, it can seem impossible to see beyond the atrocities, but if we only see the atrocities we will never see the beauty, never experience our full humanity. The dance of creation is so much bigger than the moment. Our ancestors are calling to us, may they walk beside us as we find our way through.

Originally published in the Bennington Banner