A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
October 26, 2003
"In-Between" by Victoria Safford, in Walking Toward Morning, Skinner House Books.
Copyright 2003, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
Halloween has its Pagan roots in the harvest festival called Samhain (sow-in) meaning "summer’s end." The Celtic calendar is circular rather than linear. The year was conceived as a wheel. The year has two opposite halves: winter and summer, dark and light, birth and death. October 31st, Samhain Eve, marked the death of the old year and the birth of new one. As the wheel of the year turned from birth to death to rebirth, so did the nature of the deities in the pantheon to reflect the seasons. The Goddess, who in late winter/early Spring was the maiden, turned into the Mother during Spring and Summer. And at Samhain, she became the crone, no longer fertile, but the bearer of wisdom and mystery. By the same token, the God began as the Oak Lord, born to the Goddess, then became her consort, the Horned Lord. Every Samhain Eve, he died, to be reborn at the Winter Solstice. In the meantime, he was the Lord of the Dead or the Holly King, and assisted the souls of the dead in passing from this world to the next.
When Christianity came to the British Isles, through conversion, both voluntary and forced, many of the Pagan practices and beliefs were assimilated into the Christian ones. It is easy to see how. The Christian liturgical calendar, like the Pagan one, follows a cycle of birth, death and resurrection. Samhain became All Hallow’s Day, or All Saints Day, a celebration of the passing of good Christian souls. And Samhain Eve became All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween.
Halloween was not celebrated in this country until the 1840’s, when a large influx of immigrants from Ireland brought the mixture of Celtic Pagan and Christian traditions of Halloween with them. The Celts believed the veil between worlds of the living and the dead, the human and the fairy, the material and the magical, the mortal and the divine, was very thin. Certain places, especially bodies of water, caves, and circles of stones, were seen as thresholds or entrances between the two. And at certain times of year, the solstices, the equinoxes, and the mid-points between the two, were seen as time thresholds. At Samhain or Halloween, the veil was particularly thin. It was believed that the souls of the dead were allowed to visit and that the fairies and the gods were especially active. People would dress up in scary costumes in order to keep bad spirits away. At the same time, you wanted to make your ancestors feel welcome. Meals were set outside the door for the visiting spirits. Bonfires were lit to provide warmth and light. And turnips were carved out, with faces, and candles put in to make lamps. The Christian leaders, in attempt to end this practice, associated the lamps with the devil, nicknamed "Jack", thus giving us the Jack-O-Lanterns. Somehow, it didn’t seem to stop the practice. And when Halloween started being celebrated in the States, the turnip was replaced with a pumpkin.
Trick-or-Treating also has Pagan and Christian roots. In celebrating the harvest, children would go from house to house, asking for apples or nuts. Troops of young men would dress like old women, in honor of the Goddess, and go from door to door, singing songs and asking for treats in return. Since Samhain Eve was considered a night when mischievous spirits and fairies roamed, people gave themselves permission to join in. And those who did not give treats often found pranks played on them. When All Saints Day replaced Samhain, poor people went from door to door on All Hallow’s Eve to ask for Soul Cakes. They could give these cakes to the priests who would then say prayers for the souls of their dead. If the beggars were refused, they often played a prank or trick.
Halloween as it is celebrated today, except by Modern Pagans, is more of a commercial enterprise than a powerful religious festival. I am struck by the fact that in the last few years, Halloween has come to rival Christmas in the yard and house decorating department. I am not condemning it. I enjoy the fun of it. I also think it speaks to something deep and ancient in our human consciousness, or perhaps unconscious, about the sacredness and the danger of thresholds, of standing in-between.
A threshold, literally, is a door or entrance between the inside and outside of a place. It marks a transition from being in one place to being in another and therefore is, in a way, neither here nor there. Thresholds also mark the point of change when something enters a new phase or level of definition. When I looked up threshold on the web, I got many links that described studies about thresholds of pain and thresholds of poverty. What is the point when pain becomes too much to bear? Or when one is so poor as to be impoverished?
Thresholds are often the sacred moments in our religious and spiritual lives. We celebrate and mark threshold moments all the time: the arrival of a child into our family; the coming of age of our teenagers; moving from being single to partnered; and sometimes through break-up or death, to being single again; from working to being retired; and the final transition, from life to death. At each threshold, we must wrestle with our identity, who we are, as it is changed in some fundamental way. At the same time, we are who we are, and we carry that with us as we cross.
I learned a lot about the power and the awesomeness of thresholds when I was a hospital chaplain. Almost everyone I encountered was at a threshold. And my job, through conversation, through prayer, and sometimes through ritual, was to keep people company as they walked from one side to the other, from health to illness to health again, sometimes into life, and sometimes into death. It is funny. Most of the time, I am aware that people don’t feel a need for ministers in the ordinary course of their daily lives. However, I loved hospital work because the usefulness of the ministry became concrete. Most folks didn’t care if I was a Unitarian Universalist, a Presbyterian, or a Sufi, as long as I was willing to come, to hold their hand, and to speak the words of comfort and transition. It was not me, Ellen, that they needed, but someone who could hold the sacredness and the scariness of the situation, who was willing to keep them company as they stood face to face with the holy, and who could name for them that which is too wonderful or too terrible for words.
Worship and ritual give us an opportunity to practice encountering mystery, facing adversity, and wrestling with change at the thresholds of our lives. Familiar words that we say in prayer, meditation or affirmation, or that we sing in hymns and songs, often come to us in moments of fear, despair or loss. The lighting of candles helps us mark anniversaries of births and deaths. How many of us wear a piece of jewelry or have a little object like a stone or reread certain books that were given to us or that we stumbled upon at some pivotal moment in our lives, that we use as a touchstone when we are troubled or uncertain?
Most religious traditions, including Pagan, Native American, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim Buddhist, have central stories about negotiating thresholds. And they all teach similar things. First, pay attention. Thresholds can appear suddenly and without warning and if we are not paying attention, we might either find ourselves in a place where we are unprepared to deal, or that we have missed out on an important opportunity. As Jacob says in the desert of Beth-El after his dream of the ladder, "The Lord was in this place, and I did not know it." The second is that because thresholds mark change, they can be both empowering and dangerous. Joseph Bruchac, a writer and storyteller of Abenaki Indian descent notes, "…there is…a danger to be found in threshold places—or perhaps the danger is in us—when we come too close to the hub of things, to the intersection where we may cross over, however briefly, and become empowered. When we pass through, we may be totally changed. We may even create a whole new world, or—if our minds are not straight—we may bring confusion and even death unto others and to ourselves." ("Leaping Over" in Parabola, vol. 25, no. 1, February 2000, p. 7). When I read this, I thought about how our culture pushes young people into adulthood earlier and earlier and how unprepared they are to make many of the decisions demanded of them: especially around relationships, sexuality and personal responsibility. I think too about how our technological knowledge has put us at thresholds where our moral and ethical decision-making has not yet prepared us to handle the consequences: for example in genetics and cloning, or in medical technology that keeps our bodies alive when our brains are can’t. So, to cross a threshold, one must be prepared for the unknown and for things to change in permanent and consequential ways. At the same time, the stories remind us not to hesitate too much. If we are too afraid of change or unwilling to face it, we may find ourselves stuck or left behind. If we never reach out beyond ourselves, we will never know the world, we will never know adventure, we will never know love.
Ancient peoples, like the Celts, were much more comfortable with thresholds because they lived closer to them. They knew they weren’t in control of their world. Samhain turned the fear of the unknown into play, allowing people to encounter and to wrestle the edge of mystery through ritual. The veil between the material world and the holy, the great mystery of life and death, was very thin. Our secular American culture teaches us that we are in control of our lives and it teaches that being in control of our lives is an important thing. It avoids thresholds, or rushes us through them, so we will not feel uncomfortable or uncertain. Yet, deep in us is an awareness of the sacredness of thresholds. The story I shared by Victoria Safford captures that awareness beautifully. Suddenly, this group of people realized that in this child and this old woman, they were encountering the great mystery of life and death. The veil was lifted, and they saw the Holy face to face. The only response: "what shall we sing?"
We cannot live at the threshold all the time. It is too hard to be that vulnerable, that aware all the time. We have created here a place where we can walk with one another, keep each other company, lend a hand to pull one another across. We can celebrate together, mourn together, light candles, say words of prayer or affirmation. We help one another name that which is too terrible or too wonderful for words. What shall we sing?
Sources:
Gerina Dunwich. The Pagan Book of Halloween. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.
Mara Freedman. Kindling the Celtic Spirit. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2000.