My mother loves Halloween. It is her favorite holiday. One year, she was the passenger in a serious auto accident. She lost all her teeth in the upper bridge, had a bandage all around her head and scars on her face from running into the windshield. She couldn't wait to answer the door for unsuspecting trick or treaters. Looking quite the fright, she delighted in participating in this night of fright, toothless grin and all.
This advocacy was deep and wide. For several years we would convert our entire three story house and basement into a haunted house, complete with adult guides combing through this turn of the century home while gouls and goblins (that would be the children and their friends of many ages) jumped out, screamed in the halls and moaned in the corners. The piano played by itself and doors creaked open by themselves. We raised money for the local Association for Equal Opportunity which supported poor communities in Trenton, New Jersey. I ended up being the artistic director of the haunted, it therefore being my first production gig.
I don't remember which year it started, but there was one woman who would show up with expert make-up looking quite dead and spooky. She would go down to the basement—the dungeon area—and sit in a chair so still that you were sure she was a figure or statue. She would sit there for hours, only coming to life when a passer by would come up close to examine how real the statue looked. And the fright that would follow that mistaken assumption was always goulish poetry in motion.
This is a time in our culture when we play with fear. We let ourselves ponder our shadow sides and give over to the sense memory of layered existence. We test how well we can be startled and how much we can dwell with the strangers in us. We stretch our comfort zone within darkness and give in to howling at the moon. We set aside time to acknowledge the fragile veil between life and death.
Several cultures call on one's ancestors and the dead during this time, to honor their presence in our lives, to embrace the spirit of their being in our ways and walking.
When people want to ban Halloween, it is probable that they really don't understand the need to recognize the depths of our nature in communal play and the growth possible in surviving fear of death. It is thought of as a summoning of our shadow sides, an entrance into the demonic amongst us. But it can serve exactly the opposite: we give the spirit room to thrive when we meet the dread of the unknown and uncontrollable, when we say this, too, is a part of us and need not have power over us.
It is true that what we dwell on manifests in our lives, so we need to be careful in our rituals and our cultural play. But the point of Halloween is to intentionally meet our shadows, our hidden personalities and our horrors, to give them air enough to dissipate in the mist of the morning. For when we become familiar with our fear it cannot take hold of us, when we name the dread it loses its power over us.
Very few of us have come to the place where we can embrace life with full acceptance and a joyful heart, to flow with all its struggles, its impermanence, its mutuality with death. A rare few, if, actually, any of us, are able to maintain a blissful, centered sense of self. So all of us contend with our fears and more or less find ways to feel an equilibrium, a sense of well being in our day to day lives.
After finding the reading this morning, I realized my sermon was misnamed. The call to "fear not" can send out the message that fear needs to be eliminated, that when one fears one is doing something wrong. That is not going to free us into our full power of being. The concept of not fearing sets up a self sabotage, because our fear invites us to explore that which could expand our knowledge or consciousness. It can also be something that keeps us safe from dangerous decisions, so we do not want to dismiss our fears but realize they are in dialogue with us. Fears are a part of our lives, but need not be our dictators.
The movie defending your life—three days to defend your life and either go on to the next level of existence or return to earth to work it through again. The more choices you made out of fear, the less chance you have for moving on to the next plane of existence. Simple demonstration that our fears are what both define the way we live our lives and mark the points of expansion available in our lives.
At the end of a course taught at HCC, what do we do with this information? What I was being asked was how to welcome our expansiveness. It caught me off guard. I was so busy explaining theory that I had by passed practicality. What a gift that question was: basically, what do we do with this information?
The practice is uncomplicated, though not, necessarily, simple. First, we find our center, we make the choice to tap into our inherent strength and belonging. We then find a way to relate to the larger being in us, amongst us and expressed through us. We do this through prayer, meditation, mindful activity and sacred self care. We let in the awareness that we are not alone. That we must fend for ourselves. Then we find a community, or a way of relating to others, to engage the life we choose to live and manifest our truth in the midst of others. Much like what we do here. We come here to remind ourselves of truth and beauty and love. We come here to enliven our gratitude and focus our energies on that which supports life in its fullness. We come here to refuel, to open our hearts, to surprise ourselves with new learning into deeper understanding. At least that is the hope, that is the intention. We come here to find our strength in the midst of our fears. I see a deepening—am humbled by the growth and intention—the forming of a place of support of deepening of love of challenge.
We could just as easily influence each other in response to our fears. We could emphasize dangers and encourage division. We could create systems of worth and demonize the "unworthy." We could generate suspicion and deny connectedness, looking the other way when others are struggling. We could convince ourselves that anything new or not understood is harmful to our way of life. We could pretend and behave in ways we think we should and wonder why things have less and less meaning to us. We could then assume it is someone else's fault, that what we fear is what governs us.
Whole cultures do this—whole tribes—whole communities—whole ideologies. We can seduce ourselves into avoidance of the struggle of life. We can elevate our wanting and wondering and worrying to a status of worship, feeding the dissatisfactions and fears with all our energies, until they become the reality of our lives and beauty, peace and love only incidental, far and few between chance happenings in the sea of troubles.
The greatest hook, of course, for our fears, is the fear of death. We live without full knowledge of death and that natural ignorance—why it is, what happens during it, after it and because of it—inspires our fears. We then project that fear out irrationally thinking we can stave off death by controlling our environment. The irony is as we concentrate on our death and "the end" we cannot truly live or "begin." So we stimulate our sense of life with systems of self importance, drama, and sensationalism, thinking we are getting something done, thinking we are claiming power over the moment….
There is a grave need for the courage of the unknown and the strength of the open heart and mind. In short, there is a grave need for Unitarian Universalism to share its good news and claim its heritage of summoning the courage to accept the frontier of difference, champion freedom and ennoble inner truth that resonates in this great and worthy world.
When Christian fundamentalism and its voice of doom was on the rise in the 19th century in this country, Universalism provided a counter voice of hope.
In the words of Universalist Olympia Brown, ordained in 1850:
"We can never make the world safe by fighting. Every nation must learn that the people of all nations are children of God, and must share the wealth of the world."
"You may say this is impractible," she continues, "far away, can never be accomplished, but it is the work we are appointed to do. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, we must ever teach this great lesson." (Hymnal #578)
The level of violence, alienation, demonizing and grand standing amongst religious leaders, politicians and statesmen these days is frightening. Many of us feel at a loss for what to do, how to stem the tide of belligerence and divisiveness. All we see is the stoking of fear and the dance of security.
As Unitarian Universalists we have a job to do. It's not going to help if we just like the way we sound to each other. We have a responsibility to share our understanding of the glory of diversity and the interdependent web of all existence. We have a moral imperative to encourage deeper and wider love through responsibility and celebration of life. We have a gift to share, an abundance of spirit to let flow, a summoning of beauty to inspire so that the living tradition of a religion becomes its reason to be and texts of wisdom and wonder can be respected for its guidance not enslaved in the controlling environment of literalism.
We can unravel fear by our love. We can loosen the bonds of dogma by our welcome of experience. We can lift the hopes toward freedom by claiming it in the way we live.
[Meditation—time when you've worked past your fear to a place of deeper knowing.]
Your lives are praises for living—each and every one of you. Let it add more joy and confidence to this troubled world.
So may it be. Amen.
Copyright © 2009 Lisa Ward. All Rights Reserved.