A Harvest of Memories

A sermon given by Rev. Tricia Brennan

Westminster Unitarian Church

Coventry, RI

October 31, 2010

We Americans have a complicated relationship with death. 

On the one hand we might agree with Victor Frankl who said that “death gives life its meaning.” But we probably agree more with Woody Allen when he said “I am not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

I learned a different way to view death, and to relate to the dead,

when I lived in Oaxaca Mexico with my family for a year. 

One day in the fall of 2005, at this time of year, 

driving back from the Sierra Norte mountains

about an hour from Oaxaca-

we stopped to pick up an old man

with huge four-foot wide bundle of flowers.

 He squeezed into our back seat with our daughter and a friend-

the spicy aroma of his delicate yellow-orange mountain wildflowers overwhelming our jeep. 

We presumed he was heading into Oaxaca to sell the flowers at the market, No, he told us, in a conversation blending English, Spanish and Zapotec, these flowers were for his home altar and family grave.

He had spent the day gathering them high in the mountains

and was glad for the ride to his home.

It was our first hint that the remembering the dead in Oaxaca

is not a passing event but a huge communal activity.

We in the US have begun to know about and speak of,

and occasionally celebrate,  the Mexican Dead of the day.

There it is referred to in the plural- The Days of the Dead-

Los Dias de los Muertos, or simply Los Muertos, The Dead,

and it seems to last about a week

 And it is a really big deal, at least in the part of the country where we lived. The markets were full of sugar candies in the forms of skulls

 and special breads called pan de muertos. 

Skeletons of tin or clay often dressed in fancy clothes are seen everywhere, and marigolds and other fragrant flowers are harvested.

Every home makes an altar in memory of their dead:

with photos, food that the deceased liked,

momentos associated with them- a baseball cap,

a pen, a glass of mescal,

a minature horse or soldier or stethescope or guitar.

Candles, special incense, sometimes strings of lights,

paper decorations, and flowers adorned the altars.

Places of work and school had altars too.

Most villages had a communal altar in the plaza,

and people from the community placed photos and objects.

Or there might be rows of altars all through the plaza- an amazing sight.

The most remarkable scene, though, are in the cemeteries,

much as Henri Nouwen described in the reading we heard.

Our Mexican friend Arturo invited us

to join him and his family at their family plot. 

The custom at that cemetery was to gather at night,

so when we arrived at midnight,

passing through a large stone archway,

we entered a candlelit vista like nothing I’ve ever seen.

More than three thousand people had gathered in the cemetery,

fussing around gravesites, tending headstones,

lighting candles, talking, and laughing. 

A band of six trumpet and trombone players started up

with a mix of somber and joyous songs, walking through the graveyard.

Arturo had brought a machete and carefully groomed

the soil around his father’s grave –

pulling weeds that had surfaced during the rainy season.

Arturo’s sister Letty dug holes for the large white candles, then lit them. Next to us a family had brought white paint to touch up

a cement and plaster tomb. 

We wrapped thick wool blankets around our shoulders,

as the night air was cold, and gladly accepted

 the cups of hot chocolate and mescal offered. 

Mexican writer Octoavio Paz wrote that far from fearing death, the Mexican  “chases after it, mocks it, courts it, hugs it, sleeps with it;

it is his favorite plaything and his most lasting love.”

I come away from my time in Oaxaca,

with a deeper understanding about death

and richer desire to remember the dead.

I hold up four things in particular.

First, how wonderful it is just to stop everything

and take the time to remember the dead.

Remembering is a human activity par excellence.

The capacity to remember enables us to retain our past,

to continue to learn from it, to be buoyed and strengthened again and again by what nourished us before.

When we remember the people in our lives, we deepen our connections to all that is our life, we root ourselves in this world, past as well as present,

and we know ourselves as a people with a history,

a people how have been known and loved by others,

a people with stories to tell and a past that is important.

Remembering is a way of saying life is important- it was then and it is now- and no person’s life is inconsequential, then or now.

There are lots of ways we can remember our dead.

We can visit the graves of our loved ones,

we can have a corner of our homes

where photos and momentos of the dead are placed,

we can note their birthdays and deathdays in our year,

pausing to think about them, tell stories about them,

write about them, make and eat the food they liked,

go to the places they loved, do something they liked to do,

offer a prayer of gratitude for them, if

give money to a cause that mattered to them.

Just asking the question- how can I remember so and so?

will yield ideas, I think.

A Mexican would say- ah, the dead will tell you.

A second big learning for me was how important

is the communal nature of  remembering and grieving.

In Oaxaca, remembering the dead was a communal affair.

You didn’t do it alone, and you didn’t grieve alone.

One of the graves we visited that night with Arturo

was the family plot of his neighbors.

The matriarch of the family had died about a month before.

Their grief was fresh, the soil at the grave was still freshly turned.

A large photo of her was on display, illuminated by many candles.

She had many children and they were all there,

and some of their children as well.

Her husband talked with us, told us her name,

offered us hot chocolate, invited us to sit down.

The mood at this gravesite was tender, quieter than many others,

sorrow in the air yet the physical presence

of so many people a sturdy comfort.

There is nothing wrong with grieving alone or remembering the dead alone, but only to do these things alone is not good, I think.

We humans are so linked by our common humanity,

and in no way is that more powerfully known than by our shared mortality. And by the universal loss of those we love.

Communal remembering and grieving

is one of the most intimate, sustaining and sacred things we can do.

A third lesson I have learned is the simple truth

that I am doing to die,

and everyone I know is going to die.

Studs Terkel interviewed hundreds of people in his long life.

One of them, Delbert Lee Tibbs, served two years on Death Row,

before being released for lack of evidence by the Florida Supreme Court.

In his interview Mr. Tibbs said

 “When I meet people now, if they try to make a big deal about me having been on death row,

I sometimes gently remind them that we're all on death row. The difference is that here the state's gonna do it,

and at some point you're gonna know the date and the hour, but that's the only difference.”

We’re all on death row. 

Remembering that we will die keeps us from taking life for granted.

A final awareness that comes to me

 perhaps from my time in Oaxaca or just from getting older

is the knowledge of how our relationships with the dead go on after they die. In the indigenous culture the belief is

that the powerful scent of the marigolds draws the spirits

 back at this particular time of year-

the pause after the harvest before winter sets in.

And with the sense that the dead want to visit,

comes the human hope that they will,

our yearning to connect with those who have gone on.

Now I will say in Mexico and other places

with strong indigenous cultures and practices,

there probably is more openness

to this notion of visitation of the dead.

But I met many a Mexican, our friend Arturo was one, 

who said- all this stuff about the dead coming back to visit,

I don’t know about that, but I love the remembering,

I love the festivals and the food and the time together,

and I believe it is right to honor the dead. 

And it does something good for me.

Sometimes our relationships with the dead are complicated.

Not all memories are positive or life-giving.

Yet a gift of taking the time to be with the dead,

in whatever way we do, is that we become more able to forgive.

Our capacity to forgive is strengthened 

by times when we remember together.

It is subtle, I think, but something about recognizing

the reality of death together, and together naming those gone,

inches us along the path of our own maturity,

helping us to put down resentment we carry. 

Perhaps the dead sleep better when we can forgive them

for their faults and harm.

I know we do.

This is the time of harvest, our bounty.

Sometimes when we remember those who have gone,

we actually harvest something of their love and bravery.

Here’s a simple true story about how the efforts of those

from the past still inspire- a story timely for us this week, I think.

In Washington DC, once you vote you can get a sticker

that says “I have voted!”

One woman always asks for two stickers when she leaves her polling place.

When she was growing up as a child,

she learned there are two things of

utmost importance: education and voting.

These must be powerful actions, her elders taught, because some people gave their lives and careers

so that others could go to school and vote.

So when this woman heads to the polls,

she always takes someone else with her.

She picks a name from an all too long list

of people who have lost their lives for freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers,

Dr. Martin LutherKing, Jr., Bobby Kennedy,

Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and many others.

She writes the chosen name on a piece of paper, tucks the name in her pocket and votes for two: herself and one who fought for change.

She wears her two stickers with pride and gratitude. She fulfills a sacred duty.

The dead, our dead, are sometimes referred to as “the great cloud of witnesses.”

Indeed we are lifted up by their love and bravery.

I close with a prayer and invite you to join me in spirit.

O Source of life, from whom we came and to whom we return,

we thank you for the gift of memory.

We remember places, people, animals, music, milestones.

We remember things that make us proud and strong

and things that made us sad and ashamed.

As we sift through our memories,

finding the wisdom that waits for us there,

may we know ourselves as a people whose past is ours

for the telling and the learning

and whose future is yet to be lived.

May we honor the memory of those we have known and loved

by remembering the best of their essence

and carrying that forward in our own lives

into this world to which we belong. Amen.