October 29

Halloween - or Samhaim - as it was originally known, is a Pagan holiday that celebrates the harvest before the long nights of winter.  It is said to be the time when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest. 

For those of us who have lost a loved one, it can be a time of special poignance.  As I write this, it is three and a half years since my wife died.  Cynthia loved Halloween, so it is always a bittersweet period. The dying don't always get to see their dreams fulfilled, so this moment when the veil is at it's thinnest is a reminder to us, the living, to live our lives with as much tender beauty as we are able, while we are able. Life is, after all, ephermeral.

 Those opposite faces of the coin, death and life, are mirrored in the garden. As we harvest our final crops of the long growing season, we are left with tattered leaves and the detritus of left over vegetation.  My sweet potato vines filled two wheelbarrows of greenery while the beds provided three large buckets of sweet potatoes.  Those vines will be mowed and added to the compost heap, and by Spring next year, will be black gold, ready to replenish the beds with tilth and vitality.  So as we look across the veil to those who have gone before us, we are called to make something new from the old.

New from old can be as close as the kitchen. This is apple harvest time, and an excellent opportunity to make apple cider vinegar.  The ripe fruit, sliced and submerged, is through the alchemy of fermentation, converted first into hard cider and then into apple cider vinegar. The bottles on the shelf at Christmas will allow us to look back to their moment of harvest, when they were glistening and tart and crisp. The tang and bite of the vinegar will last us through the winter till the new year, when blossoms emerge again. 

Like the trees, we should shed our leaves for the winter, when we can grow our roots and become even stronger.  The Zen proverb goes: "only an empty cup can be filled".  This period in the annual cycle is the start of period when we can empty ourselves for new growth. We need these moments on the calendar to provide pause for reflection.  As we look through the veil to the other side, it offers a perspective in which we can weigh the ephemeral moments of our day to day lives against the great weight of infinity.  A like or another emoji is trivial by that measure. How should we be spending our time? What is important?  What are our dreams for tomorrow?  How do we need to be transformed through the things of which we think or speak or read or do to arrive at those dreams? What rebirth is needed to put into practice the wisdom we have accrued through experience or pain or satisfaction?

Halloween has become a commercialised monster of sugar and costumes destined for the landfill; an orgy of waste.  Instead it should be a contemplative celebration of life.  It is a simple thing, to breathe, to be a alive. Yet most of us are so caught up in surviving that we often fail to live. Seek to enjoy this Halloween as someone fully alive, aware of the veil, and ready for the rebirth that the long nights of winter can prepare us for.