Thinning the Veil (Samhain)

Meditation

by the Rev. Elizabeth A. Lerner

Ancestors, Creative Spirits that move in the lives of animals and plants in this season of fruitful and waning life, Cool Autumn Breezes and Crisp Tree Leaves spiraling down to us and the earth, with this fire we honor the life that blazes all around us, and ebbs so quickly to dormancy or departure in coming months. With the scents of rich myrrh and frankincense we renew our own sense of the coming holiday season with its stories and traditions, and of the exotic and wonderful gifts we bring when we join in spirituality and worship with others near and far. We breathe in this moment, we breathe it out. We are alive and we know it with every atom of our beings. We take in scented air and know it as precious. We let it out, and begin to prepare ourselves for the next step on our journeys.

Reading

by Doneby Smith

Pagans are about circles and spirals. Samhain represents the point in the wheel of the year where we acknowledge death and honor it as important and necessary to life. The beauty of the dying year draws our thoughts to the subject of death. We celebrate death for making space for and providing food for life. We honor our beloved dead, our ancestors.

We feel there are many worlds that interpenetrate our everyday one. We touch them when we dream, when we meditate, when we go into trance, when we make love, when we open ourselves to the deep beauty in our world and in other people. At Samhain, we say the veil between worlds is thin. Whether it is through memory or other magic, we open ourselves to messages from our beloved dead, so this is a powerful and potentially dangerous time. We may be lead to look into the dark corners of our souls, where both fears and powers lurk.

In agricultural societies, Samhain was the time to slaughter the animals that were unlikely to make it through the winter and to preserve their meat for the lean times to come. It reminds us that our lives too will be food for those who come after: for our children and for all those whose lives we have touched. We remember that we build on hallowed ground, that the bones of our ancestors are the scaffold on which we hang our lives and our accomplishments.

So, Samhain begins our time of turning inward, thanking our physical and spiritual ancestors for their lessons, learning to value the dark where our roots are fed, and celebrating Death which, after all, gives birth to Life. Blessed be.

Sermon

Thinning the Veil

by the Rev. Elizabeth A. Lerner

Samhain, “Summer’s End,”is the time of the last harvest, when the last crops: apples, barley, turnips… are brought in, animals who won’t make it through the winter are slaughtered and dressed, and those that will live are sheltered and stabled in their winter quarters. It is a time for turning inward, literally and symbolically both. People provisioned their houses for the winter. Unlike the long outdoor days of summer, they spent time together indoors making food and household preparations for the cold season. As one neo-pagan writer puts it: “The endless horizons of summer gave way to a warm, dim and often smoky room; the symphony of summer sounds was replaced by a counterpoint of voices, young and old, human and animal.”

Like all the important holidays in the Celtic liturgical year, Samhain is a time of confluence: of the immanence of divinity - the gods are near and active, almost palpable in the crisp, ever-changing world of color and cold and life brought to fullness. At this time of change in the world, change in ourselves is also possible: people offered prayers for healing, and focused on beginning to fashion hopes and plans for the coming year.

And as a time of harvest and preparing for winter, Samhain also is a time to honor the dead, our ancestors and loved ones. It is the time for All Souls’ - which has given us our modern Halloween. People would take time to tell stories of people they’d known and lost, past generations of family. And our own sense of reconnecting to those lost with words and stories was part of a seasonal truth - that indeed the dead were closer to us, the living, on Samhain. Thus some people might even set out food and drink for them, leave a light on to guide them home on a visit to their living loved ones.

And as the light is going and the cold is setting in, Samhain is also about fire. Not only hearth fires that are part of a family turning to its inward, household life, but also bonfires, offering the chaff of the harvest, burning away extraneous things and so also cleansing as part of preparing for winter. The symbolism of this for individuals is that Samhain marks an opportunity for taking stock of oneself, for letting go, even burning way what is extraneous in ourselves, in our lives, for becoming more what we wish to be and freeing ourselves of what dilutes or negates that truest, best self.

All this makes Samhain a holiday very much about relationships, about change, about possibilities, about other worlds ands ways that exist next to our own, about the eternal link between life and death, and between souls. Samhain is a holiday about immanence, for what is sometimes called “the thinning of the veil.” As Sig Lonegren writes: “The veil to the other side is so thin at this time that you can see the spirits in the Air.” The other worlds, the gods, all the souls of those we have loved and lost - are almost perceptible - or might be, if we looked.

Whatever our theology, be we Pagan or Theist or Humanist or Buddhist, for that matter, there is meaning available to us in this holiday. Whatever our circumstances, be we urban city-dweller or suburbanite or gardener or farmer—as vanishingly few UU’s are these days—there is meaning available to us in this holiday.

We all know what it is to be turning inward in the cold of the year, to feel the world around us is charged with something special, something more than the homely realities we are used to. We all know what it is to feel something burgeoning, possible within us, and to struggle to nourish that seed of joy, strength, vision, within us, and to root out the weed that grows in our soul, of pettiness or jealousy, depression or fear that keeps us from that full existence to which we were each born. We all know what it is to mourn the loss of one dear to us, to yearn for the stories and truths of our ancestors, to contend with the effects and meaning of death in our lives and for ourselves. And we all know what it is to feel the world around us charged with a power, a quality of miracle, a fullness of life in all its forms that conveys a sense of transcendence, of something we feel beyond all we see...something we cannot name, something we may doubt, and yet we have felt it.

For any and all of these themes, Samhain offers us ways to lift our thoughts and spirits as we move into the dark season. And in the spirit of Samhain, we have a ritual to share together this morning. From its many interwoven themes, we are lifting up the aspiration to free ourselves of what we do not need or wish to carry with us into winter. I invite you to use the paper you should have found on your chair and inscribe on it something - a feeling, an issue, an activity, a struggle - that you wish to be free of as we move into winter. Ushers will come around with pencils if you need them, and will gather your pieces of paper to be burned in our Samhain fire and in this way consigned out of this realm, this room. Just as you send these struggles away from you, so may that action aid our spirits and psyches as we do what we must to transcend what bears us down, and lift ourselves and each other to meet all the dark time and light, grief and joy, that lie ahead.

As the fire is lit:

Spirit of the South, spirit of fire, of noontime and winter:
Be with us in the heat of the day
and help us to be ever growing.
Warm us with strength
and energy for the work that awaits us.

Spirit of the West, spirit of water, of evening and autumn:
Be with us as the sun sets
and help us to enjoy a rich harvest.
Flow through us with a cooling, healing quietness
and bring us peace.

Amen.