Texts: Luke 6: 20-26; Hebrews 12: 1
Fortunate Are You, When Your Heart Becomes Porous
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“Fortunate are you who are poor; the kingdom of God is yours. Fortunate are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Fortunate are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” Those are the words of Jesus, but prior to hearing them in Mexico, among Benedictine Sisters schooled in the thought and practice of liberation theology, I had never heard those words with quite that inflection. Blessed are you is what we usually hear. But fortunate? How is it fortunate to be poor, or hungry, or sad?
I’ve been pondering those words ever since our small group of travelers returned from Mexico last week. We were there to observe the festivities surrounding the Day of the Dead, and to renew our relationship with the Sisters at the Guadalupe Center in Cuernavaca. We were introduced to the Sisters a year ago, and we sensed an immediate affinity with their gentle spiritual wisdom, and their commitment to the work of human rights and social solidarity. And so when they extended an invitation to witness the three day ritual known as the Day of the Dead this year, I answered like a shot: YES! What I’d like to do this morning is to tell you about that experience, in order to invite you into something of what we discovered. But really, what I’m doing this morning is creating a kind of commentary upon the words of Jesus that we heard in our morning prayers in Mexico. You’re fortunate when you’re poor, or hungry, or lost in mourning, because it’s then that your heart can be opened wide enough for God, for the world of Spirit, to find you.
But why the Day of the Dead? Why fixate on an arcane ritual that seems to have little bearing on our lives here in Old Lyme? Over the years, I’ve become convinced that most of us in North America suffer from a kind of ritual impoverishment. That impoverishment somehow renders our lives a little flatter, a little less soulful, a little less attuned to the dynamics that make our lives meaningful. I believe we’ve lost the ability to mesmerize time. We’ve lost the ability to enchant space. When Thomas Friedman writes that the world is flat, I intuit the truth of his words, even as I lament the consequences of that truth. I sense the need for that which hasn’t been flattened, where deep pockets of cultural tradition and wisdom still reside. It’s those pockets of wisdom that provide hints and clues about the meaning of our lives. Rituals are those pockets of deep wisdom. When performed with care, they possess the ability to recreate and renew our worlds, helping us to encounter our lives with a sense of awe, and with a sense of capacious wonder.
So ok, we all have little rituals that make up our days and weeks and years – the celebrations and patterns that help us to mark time. And there are plenty of little rituals that churches perform that are perfectly pleasant – but dull. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the rituals that somehow capture the power of what it means to be alive in the world, and what it means to mark the passage of time. There are rituals that open life possibilities before us, and that help to clarify one’s journey in the world. There are those that help us to encounter the sacred, what I like to think of as the world inside the world. There are those that enlarge us, that usher toward ecstasy, celebration, joy, and ultimately, communion. As one person emphasized in Mexico, festivals are solidarity – between the living and the dead, but also between people with all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs.
In my own spiritual life, I’ve been powerfully drawn to such rituals, for their mystery, for their artistic beauty and creativity, and also for their spiritual guidance – believe me, those visits to New Orleans are no aimless idyll. It’s a form of ritual wisdom that I’m chasing there – and it is a chase. So too, what moves me most in our partnerships at Green Grass or Haiti is when we’re invited into the sacred rituals of those communities. When that happens, I believe we’re offered a precious, precious gift, a window into dimensions of our own humanity and the divine that few outsiders are ever afforded. That’s something unique to this congregation, and I hope none among us take for granted the rare privilege bestowed upon us. To be granted access to the rituals of other cultures is to pass through a wall, slipping across a threshold that is simply closed to most others. It is to be granted access to a secret world, one supercharged with mystery, vibrating with a luminous energy. That’s why I was so eager to accept the Sisters’ invitation to observe the Day of the Dead in their company.
In Mexico, that ceremony actually unfolds across three separate days: October 31st, and then November 1st and 2nd. During those days, most individuals or families will create ofrendas, or altars, on which they’ll arrange images of family members or close friends who have died, and who they wish to remember. A thick trail of marigold petals will be placed upon the ground, a golden trail guiding loved ones back home. Sweet breads and other delicacies will be placed upon the altar, along with candles, all serving as invitations to loved ones to come on home. Many altars are simple. But in the case of those who died in the past year, the altars can be enormous, and elaborate, taking up entire rooms. And they contain enormous spiritual power.
On the night of November 1st, we accompanied a priest as he visited houses where beloved family members had died during the previous year. We crossed a threshold, and entered into a zone of heightened spiritual vibrations. Here’s what I mean by that. Each altar contains the unique essence of the person who died, arranged in a display of such beauty and love that it left me simply shaking my head in wonder at the beauty of it all. There were pictures and breads and tamales. There were candles and flowers. But then, in one case, there was the cane of the woman who died. There were her shoes. There was a new set of clothes laid out for her. There was a statue of the aged grandmother from the film Coco, which in this case represented the woman we were honoring. There were crosses, and pictures of the Virgin. The whole room fairly pulsed with the life essence of the woman whose life we were there to remember. In a very real way, she was there. But it’s also true that the very creation of that scene of remembrance and love, with all of its artistry, worked to open a domain within us, one of tenderness, one of receptivity to others, one of gratitude and generosity and embracing love, that too often remains hidden, or inaccessible. That’s what I mean when I say that the room contained heightened spiritual vibrations. Fortunate are you, in other words, when such an opening is created.
A crowd of people gathered in the room, and the priest offered prayers and the reassurances of Scripture. And then we were served bread, and we were offered drinks. Before long, we left, and then we crossed another threshold, and entered another charged and potent spiritual atmosphere. We were greeted as family, and given the place of honored guests. In each home, I swore that I had never seen anything as beautiful as the altar before me, and that I had never experienced food as good, or heard music as exuberant and celebratory. But then we would venture out, only to cross yet another threshold, entering into the mystery and the power of that world once again. These are no idle creations. They may as well be illuminated by lightning.
This goes on all night. Hundreds of guests roll through each house, and each are served refreshments. Many people will stay up all night, moving from house to house, honoring the spirits of those who have returned and drawn close, if only for a night. But in time, our group retired, returning to the Guadalupe Center for the night. I had a difficult time sleeping that night. The world felt alive and mysterious to me in a way that even now, I can’t fully name. But I knew we had all been offered a precious gift that evening.
There was more to come, though. On the morning of the 2nd, our group traveled to a nearby cemetery, where we experienced something that I’ll treasure for the rest of my life. On November 2nd, cemeteries across Mexico become spaces of festivity and mourning, of celebration and togetherness. Festivals are solidarity, remember. People were arriving at the cemetery in droves, and rows of vendors selling flowers, candles, as well as food and drinks, were arrayed outside the cemetery gates. Clearly, people had been arriving since well before dawn, moving directly from observances inside homes to the open air of the cemetery. Families gathered around graves, which were splendidly decorated. They ate. They visited. They laughed. A few wept. There was nothing macabre or spooky about it whatsoever. It was a performative enactment, a ritual, that joined the living and the departed into a living and dynamic communion. I have never felt the cloud of witnesses that the author to the Hebrews wrote about so vivid or real.
Let me try to describe something further that happened in the cemetery. Under an open air pavilion at the center of the grounds, people listened as a priest said Mass. But the Mass was amplified throughout the cemetery, so that families could remain at the graves of their beloveds, in order to celebrate Mass with their loved ones. The priest read, in Spanish, the words of the Apostle Paul, about nothing being able to separate us from the love of God in Christ, not even death. He spoke and read about that great cloud of witnesses gone before us, who gather around to support and care for us. As he did, I stood looking around the cemetery at all of the families gathered to be close to one another, but to be close to their departed wives and husbands, parents and grandparents, children and friends. And then something opened inside of me. The past, the present, and future converged into what felt like a moment of eternity. My grandparents and great-grandparents suddenly felt close – people that I’ve loved, and who have shaped me indelibly. But a past version of myself, as a child, was also present, as I remembered what it was like to be in the company of my grandparents. My own parents were seated not far from me, and I thought about them, and our relationship. And then it became possible to sense the future, when they would be gone, when I, along with my children, would invite them into a moment of deep communion extending across the veil, across the threshold between the living and the dead. It became possible to imagine my own children doing it for me, and for Rachael, and for their children to do the same for them, and for all of us. It didn’t feel scary. It didn’t feel sad. It felt as hopeful and life affirming and joyful and unambiguously good as anything I’ve experienced in a long, long time. I felt somehow, strangely, held as I absorbed everything happening to me in that cemetery.
One more thing happened. When it came time to receive communion, I wasn’t sure that it was open to me as a non-Catholic. But I’ve never wanted to receive it more. And so I joined the line. When I got to the front, a woman in the Diaconate placed the communion wafer on my tongue, and I dissolved into tears. The tears had to do with the ways thresholds of time and space had been crumbling throughout the morning. But it also had to do with a profound humility around being granted access to such a moving ritual. In that moment, I was acutely aware of my status as a guest from the United States. I was acutely aware of all of the insults and derogatory speech hurled at Mexico, and Mexicans, from the United States. I was acutely aware of the pattern of xenophobia and racism, as well as the legacy of dominance exerted over Mexican affairs by the US. After all of it, they would have had every right to deny our group entrance to the cemetery, to the houses on the previous night, or to any of the intimate spaces we were invited to visit. After all of it, the woman offering communion would have had every reason to turn me away, all of them justified. But I experienced nothing of the sort in Mexico. None of us did. What we experienced was a grace and acceptance that brought hot tears to my eyes. I’m not sure we deserved any of it. But it was given to us all the same – by the Sisters, by the families we visited, all of them in mourning, and by those at the cemetery.
When the service was over, a few people started lighting fireworks, each of them exploding with a loud and percussive “BOOM!” A band started to play. We all wandered through the cemetery, and I couldn’t help wondering: how to be worthy of all this exaltation? How to receive it with the same grace in which it was offered?
This is my answer. I offer it all back to you. I offer it in hopes that it might help to counter all the distortions and half truths that characterize many of our impressions of Mexico here in the United States. I offer it in hopes that it might create porous openings within your hearts, as you navigate relationships that might be broken, or in need of mending. I offer it to provide a glimpse into a powerful and mysterious domain of our spiritual lives, as past and future generations draw close in a moment of profound communion. And I offer it in hopes that each of you might experience something of the wonder, and healing, and life affirming joy that can be found even within the depths of great loss. We all of us lose things. We all of us experience separation from those we love most. But it might be that there are undisclosed openings within space and within time, like a hole in a border fence, when it’s possible to pass through, and to sense the presence of those who are no longer with us, at least physically. I offer it to you in hopes that we’ll all sense mysteries in the world that we’ve barely fathomed, depths still to explore, truths still waiting to be elucidated. I offer it as an exhibit of the porous borders of human lives and human hearts. Fortunate are you when such openings are granted to you.
I conclude with the words of Jan Richardson, whose words we used in our unison reading.
When the wall between the worlds is too firm, too close;
When it seems all solidity and sharp edges.
When every morning you wake as if flattened against it,
its forbidding presence fairly pressing the breath
from you all over again.
Then may you be given a glimpse of how weak the wall
and how strong what stirs on the other side,
breathing with you and blessing you still,
forever bound to you but freeing you –
into this living, into this world
so much wider than you ever knew. Amen.
