May this year's Samhain be extra special

Over the past years, I've been attracted more and more to those threads of Celtic (Irish) culture in my ancestry. In two weeks, as many try to find ways to celebrate Halloween, some of us will be honoring the feast of Samhain. Of course, in the spirit of multiculturalism, we'll no doubt have a bowl or two of Halloween treats handy in the unlikely event that someone may arrive at our front door demanding "trick or  treat!"

Samhain is a good time to meet Jack O'Lantern

Photo by J. Harrington

If we're lucky, the weather will cooperate between now and month's end and the brush pile we failed to torch on the Autumnal Equinox can and will be ignited in recognition of the beginning of the dark half of the year, which many also celebrate as the beginning of a spiritual new year. If you visit this page, and scroll down a bit, you'll find a list of ways to celebrate Samhain that may offer inspiration if it seems wise and necessary to forego trick or treating during a pandemic. The alternative of a nature walk (blizzards permitting) or ancestor stories seems particularly attractive. We'll find a way to work them into our weekend's activities.

Shortly after Halloween / Samhain comes election day. We sincerely hope it brings many treats in excess of the tricks we're already expecting. May our actions over the next few weeks bring us out of the dark times of the past four years as we begin this year's spiritual new year.

Samhain

By Annie Finch

(The Celtic Halloween)

In the season leaves should love,

since it gives them leave to move

through the wind, towards the ground

they were watching while they hung,

legend says there is a seam

stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil

earth from the sky in one last pale

wave, as autumn dies to bring

winter back, and then the spring,

we who die ourselves can peel

back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.

Tonight at last I feel it shake.

I feel the nights stretching away

thousands long behind the days

till they reach the darkness where

all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch

move with me, and when I brush

my own mind across another,

I am with my mother's mother.

Sure as footsteps in my waiting

self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,

intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me." She leaves this trail

through a shudder of the veil,

and leaves, like amber where she stays,

a gift for her perpetual gaze.

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