Death, Remembrance, and the Ancestors

Yesterday at the UU church I attend, the sermon was about death. In it was asked, what do we owe the dead?  I think that is a very interesting question that is often overlooked. We don't like to think about death and dying.It's a shame that we don't, there is so much about death that can be enlightening

What do we owe the dead?  We owe them remembrance. We must remember who they were and what they did. We must remember their stories and tell them. There should be more than a name and two dates on a tombstone. That isn't even a summary of a life, just a beginning and an ending and barely that.

Why do we owe it?  The dead are our ancestors. They came before us and helped to create the world where we live. Some are even directly responsible for our being here. Others just made it easier, or travelled to where we live.

Does this mean we must forget or ignore the wrongs done?  No, not at all. But there are few people who have only done evil. You must decide who you will honor, how, and when. If there is someone you just cannot bring yourself to honor, then you would be doing harm to yourself to do so. And it is not honorable to pretend to honor someone just because you feel forced to do so. It should come from the heart and be given freely.

Community

A bard walked into a small village near some mountains. That evening, as was the custom, he told a story. Now, being a bard, the story wasn't just for entertainment. Everyone in the village gathered around a fire in the center of the village to listen to him.

"I have just the story for you, it's about a fellow bard and some of her travels"

This bard, she had been travelling around for a bit and came across a village deep in a forest. It was at least two days walk to the nearest village from it. She was very weary from her travels and was looking for a place to stay.A well-to-do family offered her a place to stay for her visit. This bard, of course, reciprocated by performing for this family.

The following day, she walked about the village, both because she was interested in new places and because that is how she usually came up with new stories. Walking about, she noticed that the people rarely acknowledged each other. If someone stumbled, no one helped them. When she got lost and needed help to find her way back  to her host's house, she had to ask four people before any bothered to help.

That night, she did as bards do and went to the village center to sing a ballad. Few showed up. Thinking perhaps the villagers simply did not know she was there or perhaps were busy with other things, she tried again the next night. Again, few showed. She tried one last time, hoping to share her music, songs, and news with these people. Yet again, they did not show.

After the third night, she left the village and walked down the road to the next village. On her way, she thought about the people of that village. Each was occupied by his own life and seemed to care little about anyone else. There was no trust of the village elders. The village commons will ill-kept. The central well was in poor shape. Everything that was shared was in obvious need of care. The poor were near death, the wealthy had more than enough to share without impacting their lifestyle, yet refused to help anyone. There was no sense of community, no sense of duty to others, no sense of commitment to the village. She wondered if they would bother to band together to defend the village if attacked.

As she approached the next village, she was accosted by an armed guard. The bard was asked who she was and why she was going into the village. After explaining, she then had to write her name and how long she expected to be and carry a card with when she would be leaving.

A wealthy family let her stay with them for the three days she would be there. That night, everyone in the village was there. She couldn't be certain, but there was what appeared a few people from the village. They were all very quiet and still the whole time she sang and told stories. The following day, she wandered around a little and noticed that there weren't that many people in the market. No haggling over prices either. It was very eerie. 

On her last day there, she talked to one of the people she thought she saw in the other village. Indeed he was. Seems the people in these two villages would live for a while in one, then move to the other, then move back whenever they got tired of either too much organization or too little. She could not understand that, no one liked the way either village was run, but would not try a middle road. 

Words

Words are powerful things, sometimes even more powerful than we realize. We use them everyday for everything from the trivial to the profound, and yet, we often don't realize what we are doing with them. What are words?  Are they merely labels or do they refer to something that exists?  Why are they so powerful?

There are two main ideas about what words are. One is that they represent something that exists, whether it is real or not. It leads to the problem of how many unicorns aren't in the doorway. The other is that words are merely labels and have no meaning beyond that. I rather prefer the latter, though there is a problem with it that I don't remember off the top of my head. It seems to me that words main use is to be labels for things and ideas. If we didn't have words, we'd likely have some other way of referring to things.

More interestingly, why are words so powerful?  Because they are labels and as labels they allows us to have handles on things outside of ourselves. This is why knowing the 'true name' of something was so important. If you knew what something was, you could control it in ways others couldn't. Some people are afraid of labels because they fear being boxed in by them. This is because so many people use them wrong. A person isn't just a set of labels, there is so much more. Labels should be used for a person to get a better hold on a part of her personality, not to pigeon-hole her. I have not experienced such freedom as I have when I determined my personality type. It tells me a bit about me and things that I need to watch and why I relate to the world in the way I do. Am I defined by it?  Not in the least, there are so many ways that I don't fit into a neat little box. But, it does give me a handle on a part of myself and understanding of myself that I would not have without that label.

Finding Oneself

This is the hardest thing I have ever set out to do. Trying to find out who and what you is not easy. There are so many blind alleys, wrong turns, dead ends that sometimes it is hard to keep going. I know that I have thought about giving up more than once. Not only is it not easy, you find things out about yourself that you don't like. Sometimes, even things you had forgotten. Then, there are the things that you sometimes wish you could change because they make your life harder. Many of these are things you cannot change, they are a part of who you really are.

There is so much beneath the surface of most people, it's a shame that it often goes undetected. Even more so because it is not even realized by the people themselves.It is difficult and time consuming and can be very scary at times. You can dig up some stuff from your past you'd have thought better left buried. Not really the best place for it, it can't be dealt with if it remains buried. Sometimes, you have to dig up old hurts and treat them or they can make things worse for you.

And then there can be problems if who you are doesn't fit with society. When you have to hide who you are because to do otherwise can make your life even harder. Or possibly have someone end your life because who you are is offensive to them.

"Natural"

Natural, it means good right?  Nothing that is natural can be bad for you?  I cringe every time I hear someone say that it's good for you because it's natural, or it has no side effects because it's natural. Pagans and people who eat organic food are the biggest perpetrators of this myth, and it is a very dangerous one at that. Don't get me wrong, I prefer organic food and would rather use 'natural' remedies; I just don't automatically assume that just because something is natural means that it won't hurt me. Maybe it's the allergies, perhaps it's my chemistry knowledge, or possibly it is because I like playing with rose bushes with my bare hands.

There are two thoughts that jump immediately into my mind when I hear someone say that because it's 'natural' it's safe. Those are, arsenic is perfectly natural and will kill you, followed by belladonna is natural and, while it is used as a medicine, it will kill you. If you aren't careful, Nature will hurt you, or possibly kill you.

And the argument that being gay isn't 'natural' never seemed right to me. For one thing, there are animals who are gay. I'm thinking about the two gay penguins in the New York zoo who raised a chick. Another is that we humans do a lot of things that are 'unnatural'. What I mean there is, that it's not unnatural, but even if it were, it still wouldn't matter. We get too hung up on certain types of natural that we ignore others and at times, I think we forget that nature does not care about us the way we would like to think it does.

Finally, the First Principle

Sorry about being so erratic, that will change. It has taken me some time to sort myself out some, but I will now post more regularly. Hoping to post the first Monday of every month, and maybe try for a second post during the month as well.

The First Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person. This one a big one, like the seventh. Without this one, there is no community. Humans have struggled with and against this idea for millennia. With each battle over civil rights, we get a little closer to realizing it. I am not sure that we could ever actually attain this; it is a goal to strive for, not a destination to arrive. To have this goal means that we are on a path to better ourselves, and if we take that seriously, we will improve everyday. We might not gain much on any single day, and it may look like we are not going anywhere, but after we look back at how we have changed, we will see it.

Druidry, I think, has inherited something like this from Neo-paganism. Because pagans are so diverse and different from the overculture, we don't like to exclude people just because they are different from us. Also, we are small enough, that for our very survival we cannot turn people away without good reason. This goes deeper, though. We respect all of nature, and we see ourselves as part of nature. How can we not respect the inherent worth and dignity of everyone?

This one ties in very closely with the Seventh principle. The Seventh is about respecting all of nature. This one is about respecting a subset of nature. The principles always seemed to me to build on one another and several increase the scale where it operates. You start out with one person, build up to groups of people, then it is groups of groups, and finally all of creation.

Like many things in nature, the principles are circular. You start at one end and circle round till you end up right back where you started. Each is a foundation for the rest with the others building on it. They are similar, but not the same, as many ideas, morals, virtues, etc in paganism. We are all heading to the same place, though our paths there are different.

The Second Principle is justice, equity and compassion in human relations. With acceptance of others, I think compassion comes naturally. As we learn about each other, we start to realize how interconnected we all really are. Then we see how justice and equity for all humans benefits us.

Druids realize that we are all connected. What we do to one, we do to ourselves. If we don't treat with compassion, we will not be treated with compassion.