Today is day two of sugar skull decorating at my open studio...an open studio I share with my friends Ivory Fly, Gwydion, and Bart. Strangers drop in to see what kind of art is being created in the neighborhood, and so do old and new friends. It feels a bit like opening day for the dead...their first event of the season. Amidst the art, there always is an altar to them, and of course, the sugar skull decorating.
Soon I will be sitting at a table decorating sugar skulls again. I have more names of the dead to put on them. As I do it, the dead draw closer. My favorite moment yesterday is when Kore, Maia and Julian, three children I am fond of, were decorating the skulls. I think the dead ESPECIALLY like skulls made by kids.
6 comments:
It is interesting to me how, in my Quaker meeting, even without any official "keeping of days", my local band of Quakers winds up observing Samhain at this time of the year.
This past Sunday was the third year in a row that we wound up having a thread of spoken messages on the subject of grief and mourning rise spontaneously in the weeks near Samhain. So many of us were holding our Beloved Dead in our hearts this week--I was really struck by it.
After worship, during fellowship lunch, I talked about Samhain, and people were surprised to hear about its associations in Paganism--clearly, the holiday had not been the reminder, but rather the tides of the Earth.
I described your practice of decorating the skulls with the names of the Beloved Dead each year, and related your anecdote from your last post on how you knew, last year, that you would be writing the name of a friend now dead on a skull this year. The Friend I told the story to was visibly moved.
We honor one another's dead, and become a People to one another.
Blessed be, Deborah. Greetings of the season to you.
I so wanted to be with you all this weekend, but went to a memorial for Tara Webster all Saturday afternoon and visited our dying friend Sequoia on Sunday. Just in time, too, since she passed several hours after we left.
I swear, my blog seems to be just one death notice after another. And I haven't even mentioned some other deaths during the last three weeks!
I look forward to making Samhain novena candles for my mother, my friend Sequoia, and others this Sunday, even if I won't be dancing with you in the Headlands this year, or at the Spiral Dance either. I will invite by Beloved Dead to a Samhain rite with visiting Pagan scholars in Chicago this year.
Thanks for posting the picture!!!
I like being in pictures!!!
~~Julian
Hi nice blog !
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I'd love to know how you make these, they are so beautiful! I wanted to drop by and say hi, and to wish you all the best for Samhain. x
If you have an undecorated skull still calling to be decorated, please make one in honor of my dad who passed from the Hideous C six months ago. His name is Don and he was the most dramatic and creative person I've ever known. he loved gardens and parties and musical theatre
Blessings to you and those you love,
A-C
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