HOLIDAYS OF HOPE, HOLIDAYS OF COURAGE

The days are getting shorter, the light is getting weaker, trees look skeletal and humans get scared.  Perhaps that’s why we have some of the holidays we do at this time of the year.  There are three happening in the next two weeks – Halloween, All Saints Day, and Diwali – all from different traditions – all about life over death, good conquering evil, and the hope and courage that knowledge brings to us as we face our world.

In all of our fun and flagrancy, we tend to forget the serious roots of Halloween – which is originally the Celtic holiday of Sah-ween.  It is a time, as my Wiccan friend, Grove Harris wrote in the Huffington Post:

“...when some experience the veils between the living and the spiritual realms as thin, [it] is a particularly good time for opening to messages from loved ones who have died and crossed over.”

The lit pumpkins, the bon fires – perhaps even the wearing of costumes of what scares us – help us to deal with and conquer our fears.

On November 13^th begins the Hindu holiday of Diwali, also a festival of lights.  There are candles lit, fireworks, and stories related to Diwali.  One is from the Ramayana, the story of how prince Rama tries to get back the love of his life, Sita, who had been kidnapped by an evil demon.  Even though things look most hopeless and bleak, in the end, the good guy wins. 

In the Catholic Church November 1st is All Saints day.  This is a day to honour those special men and women recognized because at great personal cost – often death -- they stood up for their religion.  The next day, November 2^nd, is All Souls Day which in Mexico is called El Dia de los Muertos.  Like Halloween, it is a time to reconnect with ‘those [loved ones] who have died and crossed over.’

I think the message of all these traditions is that even though it looks like dark days, bad times and death will take over, they don’t.  Life and light, hope and courage win out.  And if you think that’s just a lot of wishful thinking, let’s remember some souls who, despite all odds against them, and at great personal cost, changed the world for the better.

I’m thinking of people like Mahatma Gandhi who took on the whole British Empire, which at that time owned ¾ o the world!  His work led to India’s independence from Britain, the change in the caste system, the civil rights movements in the U.S. AND South Africa, and is influencing environmental sustainability and justice movements around the world today.

Think of Dr. Wangari Maathai, who, despite personal and political problems, threats of assassination and harassment from the government of Kenya, headed an organization that planted 45 million trees in Kenya, empowered women in her country, and became the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize.

Over the summer I read a book that I recommend to everyone.  Written by two NY Times reports, Nicholas Kristoff and his wife, Sheryl Wudunn, it is about the oppression women around the world still find themselves in because of things such as sex trafficking, health inequities, lack of education or control of their own lives.  It is, in that respect, a deeply troubling book.  But it also greatly inspirational as they tell of every day women who stand up in their communities – again, against GREAT odds -- and fight against the injustices around them, there by changing the world. 

No one said changing the world was easy or without fears.  While we celebrate the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, we usually don’t know that he was scared.  In his book Stride toward Freedom, he describes his sitting at his kitchen table late one night, ready to give up on changing the country in order to protect his family after another threatening phone call.  He wrote that he spoke to God and said:

 ‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right.  But now I am afraid.  The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter.  I am at the end of my powers.  I have nothing left.  I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”

In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, a government whistle blower, Daniel Ellsberg publicized what are called the Pentagon papers leading, eventually to the end of the Vietnam war and the demise of Nixon’s term as president.  With the full force of the U.S. government against him, Ellsberg was on trial and faced 40 years in prison for what he did.  But as his son, Robert Ellsberg, wrote: movingly in a blog for the Huffington Post (06/19/11) about his father:  “he wanted us to receive lessons that might be the only legacy he could leave us: the importance of following one's conscience; the value of a life dedicated to truth; the message that there are things in life that are worthy of the greatest sacrifice.”

So, at when the days are getting darker and colder, when perhaps we might fear what’s ahead – whether with the weather or the political situation –these holidays are there to remind us that good does conquer evil and, as MLK said, the “arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”