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Imagine the unthinkable: Imagine that we human beings didn’t have to work for a living. Imagine that everything we needed to prosper in life was already there for us, like Eden. Imagine a world without money where we could pay for whatever we needed with only a smile. I wonder, what would we do with all the “free time” we had?  How many of us would decide to become policemen or to sell insurance?

If we didn’t have to work, I imagine that we would sleep a lot; we’d putter in the garden, goof off with the kids, play tennis and golf, enjoy long lunches, and do fun stuff, like fishing and playing cards. We’d weave and knit beautiful things and tell stories to each other. And no matter what, we’d play music and sing and we’d dance.

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“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”  Albert King… and others.

As many of us already know, the word Halloween is an English language contraction of the Christian “All-Hallows Eve.” Hallowed meaning holy, as in, “Our Father, hallowed be thy name.”

But the roots of the holiness of Halloween lie deeper than we usually suspect, and predate the arrival of Christianity in Europe by at least two thousand years, probably even longer. The ancient Celts who inhabited Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man marked Samhain, or “Summer’s End,” with a celebration of fire and feasting. In October, the gifts of Summer– wheat, hay, potatoes, pears and apples– had been harvested, but each day the Sun sank lower, dimmer, toward the edge of the southern horizon. The dark half of the year was becoming stronger. Nights grew longer and colder and the first fingers of Winter began to pry open the gates that would unleash storms and snow and ice and the fear that perhaps the Sun and its power would not return to the North.

During the bright, Summer half of the year, now fading to its end, a thin veil separated this world– Ourworld– from the Otherworld. But on the night of Samhain the veil shredded. The dead, who had left this world, and all the ghosts and goblins, fairies and other hidden souls found themselves able to wander freely out into the night to mingle with the rest of us, those of us still alive. Read More

“God walks among the pots and pans.”    St. Teresa of Avila

Copenhagen

Early Sunday morning. Skies the color of slate, and slate-colored rain pouring down. Late August in Denmark, but as wet and cold as late November in California. Except for a woman in red tennis shoes walking a tiny black dog, there’s not another soul on the streets in Vesterbro while I wait, shivering, for the number 14 bus. Then I’m the only passenger, still shivering, as the bus splashes through the streets to the foggy green and deserted Østre Anlæg Park. Where in the world is everyone this morning? In church?  Certainly not in the Hirschprung Museum. Only an elderly couple shares with me the empty galleries. The man and woman appear to be in their late seventies, if not older. They act tenderly toward each other. She is taller, but that’s perhaps because his shoulders are so stooped. Water drips from their gray coats, like water from my black one. Rain pounding on the roof makes it sound like we’re inside a drum.

Gradually a glow of sunlight illuminates us. It’s not a burst of light on the road to Damascus, but still, it’s a revelation. The clouds of Copenhagen have not evaporated, raindrops still rattle down. But here inside the  museum light radiates from a small painting; its gravitational field pulls me and the two strangers into its orbit.

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