Blessed Samhain to you!
Whether you are Pagan or not, feel free to share:
Whether you are Pagan or not, feel free to share:
- Who are your beloved dead whose memory you are honoring?
- Who are the dead you are glad have gone, whom you are glad to release?
- Who was born in this last year whom you are welcoming?
- What other endings, losses, and new beginnings do you recognize and honor?
Also, Happy New Year to those of us for whom this is a new year...
Stasa, thank you for the invitation to remember our beloved dead!
ReplyDeleteSuddenly, reading your post, it all makes sense: why I have not participated at all in the fussing and fun of costumes and candy and pretend scariness. Instead, I've watched friends, neighbors, family on FaceBook, at a distance, while honoring an irritable housecleaning urge. This kind of housecleaning is often how I greet the New Year. Yet I had not realized before this evening that Samhain is considered the New Year by Pagans!
A few Pagan friends have commented about Samhain and the thinning of the veil--the serious side of Oct. 31. Like the difference between "Santa Day" and Christmas. These are the posts I've read and re-read.
Now it all converges on me, an "aha" moment. Yes, I did lose a loved one this year. A one whom I loved dearly and yet let go, over and over, so many times, to distances and to various girlfriends/boyfriends/husbands (mine and hers) and to the busy-ness of college/family/real life.
Finally, this spring, I let her go again, to bone cancer. Her husband called to tell me of her illness only after she had passed to the other side--her wish. Yet she still seems to be with me so often...an artifact of our many distances is that we were always close, no matter how far apart we were. That there is a veil drawn between us does not make the distance seem any greater.
She was neither Pagan nor Christian, but firmly atheist. I have no idea which veil she is on the other side of, only that she is no longer on this side of this veil that surrounds me like a caul and keeps me living life here in each moment.
Blessings,
Natalya