A few months ago, I was on holiday during a time of particularly intense mental and emotional stress at work. One day, my husband and I went walking, and tackled a near vertical track leading over into a beautiful glen. Unfit, I struggled with the steep gradient. I pushed myself and pushed myself, yet the lactic acid built in my muscles compelling me to stop every few yards. Frustrated and beaten, I yelled "I cannot do this!" In a moment of insight, I recognized that I had vocalized not just my current physical state, but the state of my soul. For reasons I cannot quite articulate, this was a very healing experience. There is something powerful about our physical knowing reflecting our spiritual knowing.
At the moment, my social media feeds are full of church-going friends debating how, whether or why Christians should/shouldn't engage with Halloween. Yet this black and white argument fails to address the fact that this festival was once part of an important opportunity, when the nights drew in and nature slept, to physically and spiritually engage with the darkness of life, and reaffirm our belief in the Light. We live in a death-denying, sin-denying society - surely, this society needs the church not to ignore the Hallowmas Triduum (three day festival of All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls) but to engage with it.
Below are excerpts from two writers who have helped me think differently about these festivals:
"Both spring and fall Triduums deal with that passage from death to life which is at the heart of the Christian mystical path, and in fact, all mystical paths. But they do so in very different modes, with a very different emotional and spiritual coloration. At Easter the days are lengthening, the earth is springing forth with new life, and resurrection energy is already coursing through everything in the physical universe, like Dylan Thomas’s celebrated “force that drives the green fuse through the flower.” Resurrection is sort of a no-brainer, if you want to think of it that way; all the currents of our being are already set in that direction.
In the Fall Triduum the movement is more inward, against the grain. The days are shortening, the leaves are fallen, and the earth draws once again into itself. Everything in the natural world confronts us with reminders of our own mortality. The scriptural readings as the time just before Advent approaches are more and more preoccupied with the end, not only personally but cosmically: the last coming, the end of time. In this dark and inward season, there is little that encourages us to somersault over death right into resurrection; we must linger in the dark, allow the dawning recognition of how fragile we are.
And yet in the midst of this broody season of dark and inwardness, the days do offer themselves as a journey, a progression we can take. Halloween, that great druidic celebration is often lost in excess and revelry. But if you pay attention, it is actually asking us to acknowledge the false self (yes, head out trick-or-treating dressed as your false self!), let the “ghoulies and ghosties, long leggity beasties, and things that go bump in the night” cavort as they will without causing us alarm. “All shall be well, and all manner of long leggity thing shall be well.” The shadow faced, we are then free on November 1 to move into that most exquisite and subtle foretaste of the glory to come, the mystical communion of saints. From my own personal experience I can say that not Easter but All Saints is the thinnest of the thin places between heaven and earth, where the boundaries between ourselves and all we have loved but deemed lost, all we have grieved for, all the roads not taken in our lives, are met in the gentle solace of “yes.”
From there, having glimpsed on November 1 that (in the words of a wonderful old children’s book) “all land is one land under the sea,” we are then invited on November 2 to return to our human condition and particularity; to acknowledge and grieve the ones we have lost (from the viewpoint of this world) and to prepare ourselves to live more deeply and courageously this strange dual walk that we humans seem cosmically appointed to traverse, poised “at the intersection of the timeless with time” as the poet T. S. Eliot depicts it.
In the quiet, brown time of the year, these fall Triduum days are an invitation to do the profound inner work: to face our shadows and deep fears (death being for most people the scariest of all), to taste that in ourselves which already lies beyond death, drink at its fountain, then to move back into our lives again, both humbled and steadied in that which lies beyond both light and dark, beyond both life and death. What better tilling of the inner soil for the mystery of the Incarnation, which lies just ahead?
(Excerpts from Cynthia Bourgealt "The Fall Triduum - another twist of the spiral" originally published on The Contemplative Society blog.)
And, more concisely:
And, more concisely:
“All Saints' Day is the centerpiece of an autumn triduum. In the carnival celebrations of our ancestors used the most powerful weapon in the human arsenal, the power of humor and ridicule, to confront the power of death. The following day, in the commemoration of , we gave witness to the victory of incarnate goodness embodied in the remarkable deeds and doers triumphing over the misanthropy of darkness and devils. And in the commemoration of we proclaim the hope of common mortality expressed in our aspirations and expectation of a shared eternity.”
(Quoted from Sam Portaro from “Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts” 1998, Cowley Publications)
And so inspired by these sorts of reflections, I wonder how the church might "do" Hallowmas differently - and perhaps better? How might we acknowledge our false selves which deny the image of God in self and other. How might we offer opportunities to engage with our darkness and that of our world, before offering the opportunity of sainthood and the hope of eternity?
And so inspired by these sorts of reflections, I wonder how the church might "do" Hallowmas differently - and perhaps better? How might we acknowledge our false selves which deny the image of God in self and other. How might we offer opportunities to engage with our darkness and that of our world, before offering the opportunity of sainthood and the hope of eternity?
This year, I have been inspired by the example of Worldvision, who in their #NightofHope appear to have combined the reality of darkness with the hope of the light. Supporters are encouraged to remember the children of Syria - currently facing their fourth year in a war zone - and decorate a pumpkin with a heart, displaying it as a sign of solidarity with those children. The supporters are also encouraged to raise money for Worldvision projects which support those children and their families. You can find out more about their work here: http://anightofhope.worldvision.org.uk/why-a-night-of-hope/
Surely there are few things in our world as dark as the violent conflict which dehumanizes so many. Perhaps using this Halloween to look that darkness in the face, yet refusing to be paralyzed by its power, and by symbol and action proclaiming a resilient hope - perhaps, in that, we might reclaim Hallowmas as it was intended to be?
