What We Turn Back into the Soil
It’s Hallows season–Samhain, Halloween, what have you–and my mind turns to mortality, decomposition, recomposition and the great wide Circle of Life.
I’ve written a bit about death. Here, about the fact of mortality. Here, about how we can prepare for our deaths in a manner that is kind to our survivors (downloadable workbook included!) And here, finally, as I have grappled with the dark marvel, the creative force that death actually is.
Today, I have just returned from a weekend of camping with members of the Northern California Atheopagan Affinity Group, which calls itself the Live Oak Circle. We had a lovely time.
One of the things we like to do is to play getting-to-know-you-better games like We’re Not Really Strangers and Truth or Dare, so our conversations can find themselves in very deep places. I don’t remember exactly how we came around to it, but I was suddenly struck by the “inverse harvest” of this season, and asked, “what is it that didn’t work out, which you are now turning into the ground and composting so that something new can grow?”
I think there is something in this. Hallows is the final of the three harvest Sabbaths: the harvest of flesh. It is the time when herds were culled so there was enough food to feed the survivors over the winter, when meat was preserved to last into the dark days, and when, these bloody rites accomplished, we reflect on death and those who have died: our ancestors and those who are no longer with us.
Yet Hallows is also, beyond a reaping, a giving back: it is when, the cycle over, we release what we have held and will no longer serve. We mourn, we remember, and we let the remnants–even, one day, of our very own bodies–go back into the great cycling of materials that is our Universe.
Soon to be something new, emergent, a sudden wonder risen from the dust of the past.
It is a solemn time and often a sad one, but there is a powerful mystery in it. As I consider these themes each year I grow more and more accepting of my own inevitable death, and the great majesty of Life’s turning wheel.
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