belonging

The core belief of the [Day of the Dead] is so poetic and simple: as long as we remember those who have passed away, as long as we tell their stories, sing their songs, tell their jokes, cook their favorite meals, then they are with us, around us, and in our hearts.

Samhain was considered to be a moment when the veil between this world and the otherworld was at its thinnest...This was a liminal moment in the calendar, a time between two worlds, between two phases of the year, when worshippers were about to cross a boundary but hadn't yet done so. Samhain was a way of marking that ambiguous moment when you didn't know who you were about to become, or what the future would hold. It was a celebration of limbo.

A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers – the experience of knowing we always belong.

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.

[Someone] recently gave me a book that mentions Proteus, the shape-shifting sea god who tells you your fortune if you can clasp to him like a tick. But if you think the most common question asked of Proteus involves either love or death, you're wrong. The most common question is: How do I get home?

Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But
even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of
heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.

... the ultimate touchstone [of friendship] is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

O, open your hearts, friends,
that your pain and loneliness
be turned to Love;
And then, we shall rejoice in the Beloved
together!

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell...
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Some sounds
use words. I hear
the language of leaves.
It is deep and order
soft and real.