Across the ceiling from wall to wall, they dance and sway in the gust of our opening door, like colorful laundry strung on a line in a summer breeze. Papel picado - purple, red, blue, pink, yellow, green, orange and white tissue paper cutouts - herald life and death in images of festive skeletal characters. A constant reminder as I come and go that things are not often as they seem, if we probe a little deeper.
I always thought El Dia de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead, was a morbid affair. An exaltation of death in an irreverent parade of costumed skeletons. At best, I believed it to be the Mexican version of Halloween, dismissing it as anything of interest. After all, what did I possibly want with skeletons?
Nothing.
Until, quite by accident, two years ago I wandered into the Seattle Center the last weekend in October, during a festival celebrating this holiday. I had come to the Center grounds with a notebook and pen to write a story I didn’t find, and stepped instead into a world of history and art, folklore and traditions, altars and remembrances; a world of calavaras de azucar, pan de muerto and ofrendas; the world of Jose Guadalupe Posada and his satirical depiction of the rich and the poor in Mexican society at the turn of the twentieth century, embodied in his famous drawings of La Catrina.
I came and beheld, and no longer did it all look like death glorified. It was life celebrated and the fear of death mocked. A rich way of remembering loved ones who have passed on; a grappling with the human experience; how in the end, we are all skeletons beneath our costumes, whether elaborate or plain. The drawings, the altars, the parade of calaveras, poetry, marigolds and photos, they whispered to me, We all share the same end, so let us not fear it. Let us live with joy the lives we have, embrace the loved ones who have gone before us, the ones who are still with us, the ones whose histories are woven with ours. We are all part of something bigger. Let us stop and remember.
Let us even dare to throw a party, to come together with music and dancing and feast, to pause in the midst of all the tragedy and glorious ordinary, to hang our translucent colored papers on the line from past to present.
And finally, I saw beauty where once I saw only skeletons.
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Linking with Lisa-Jo and the community of Five-minute Friday writers. Today's prompt is "Laundry," to which this post is only abstractly related...
I didn't spend much time explaining traditions during the holiday in this post, but for those who are interested, I wrote my first post on El Dia de los Muertos two years ago. You can read it here.
It's 5:53 am, and I'm rushing to leave early this morning so I can write before work. I gather my things, stuff my backpack and sit down on the floor to slip on my shoes, thinking of how I still want to sit down under a cozy blanket, as I do for a few minutes each morning, to read the word of God. I begin to tie the laces, and my hands stop mid air, arrested by this thought, this crazy thought: Leave your shoes off. That's right, take them off.
It's not even a Moses-and-the-burning-bush-holy-moment that draws me here, sock footed. Only the realization pressing with quiet intensity. God is not a fast food God. He is not for my quick spiritual consumption, to rush in with shoes laced and ready to run away as soon as my five minutes are up. And even if I only have five minutes, he is a God whose presence is to savor, not to gulp down, eager to get to the Next Thing.
My heart sinks. There is nothing ordinary about this God, and yet, that is exactly how I approach him. If I don't even have time to take my shoes off, if I can't even give him that regard, I might as well walk out my front door and begin the day right now.
So I take off my shoes and I walk to our sofa, the one I meet with him on in the morning; the one where I wait to clear the early morning fog, wait to hear his words, to drink in his love. I curl up under the blanket and pull out the book. And he speaks, filling me up with grace for the day.
My soul, wait silently for God alone,
For my expectation is from Him.
6 He only is my rock and my salvation;
He is my defense;
I shall not be moved.
7 In God is my salvation and my glory;
The rock of my strength,
And my refuge, is in God.
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Joining up with Lisa-Jo and the community at Five-Minute Friday, to the prompt of "Ordinary."
