Gazing in the Mirror

April 9 - The Comfort of Recurring Holidays

Do not believe in traditions because
they have been handed down for many
generations. But after observation and
analysis, when you find that anything
agrees with reason and is conducive to
the good and benefit of one and all,
then accept it and live up to it.
~ Buddha

...every man has to interpret the
universe in terms of his own thinking
and personal relationships, and that
in order to do it, he has to have faith
and confidence in his own interpretation.
~ Ernest Holmes

Easter arrives on April 12 and there won't be Easter Baskets full of treats in my home this year as our sons are now teenagers.  We put them away some years ago.  My thoughts in writing this essay were about these markers of time that come around year-after-year. Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, St Patrick's. Deng Ming-Dao in The Lunar Tao notes that "We live in times marked by self-consciousness, self-analysis, and worship of the ironic. We are afraid to be seen as mere repetition of the previous generation. We want to be new ! Revolutionary ! Unprecedented !"

He goes on to realize "The lunar calendar's current state reflects many revisions over the years. . . . What emerges millennia later is the pattern born of consensus. The practices have changed, but they have changed slowly enough that each generation can take comfort in them". We had colored eggs, jelly beans, malted eggs, chocolate eggs and Peeps when I was a child. We had Easter Baskets with brightly colored plastic grass. We hid and hunted for the colored eggs. When I was a child, Easter also meant going to church in a brand new dress and perhaps even a bonnet. The feelings of newness were everywhere that day. There was the feeling of triumph and happy glory. Winter was overcome ! The tomb held no power.

My family now does not go to church. My husband went to a Unitarian Church as a child but at some time in adolescence he jumped out of the moving car (probably as it slowed down or started from a stop) rather than go to church. It was the last time his parents attempted to "make" him go. Like his father before him he rejects religion and does not believe in God. Death has no meaning but the cessation of the body. His parents live on but only as they inform his values through memory. It is different with me. Those who I've loved including his parents live on in a non-physical reality for me. Not embodied but still uniquely individualized as consciousness. These differences don't matter all that much because neither of us can truly know which perspective is the accurate one.

Interestingly, when they were quite young, both of my sons created their own forms of spirituality. My older son had an Eastern style ritual for beginning new ventures or greeting a new day. My younger son had a sense of God as everything and sometimes utters certain phrases like OMG (oh my god !). However their personalities and styles continue to change and evolve. My daughter admitted some years ago that she was becoming interested in spirituality. The Science of Mind philosophy was a turning point for my own self and I read the magazine's Daily Guides every morning. To my own thinking a life without any spirituality is only 2/3rds lived. A person can manage life without wholeness but I find adding spirituality brings a depth to living. The path that any one person chooses matters not to me. My husband's path of no religion is his choice. Each path has its lessons and life is partially for the purpose of learning them.

Change is constant. From the moment of our birth change is our companion through life. We grow from infant, to child, to teenager, to adulthood. We come to the peak of some experiential wave and then the wave begins to collapse and the experience ends but we continue to change. Holidays are like the stars in the sky at night. The stars pass through their cycles. The moon passes through its cycle. When I first wrote this essay we were on the eve of a new moon. Owing to the season and the moon's cycle the advice was, it is "a very good day to clean, clear, eliminate, prune, and make space". It is still Spring Cleaning time and getting the garden ready for planting time here in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, it is the other side of that cycle, a time to clear out the produce of the growing season. A time of cleaning out by letting go and turning the attention towards the time for rest that is winter.

My older son at age 12 knew there was no Easter Bunny, no Tooth Fairy, no Santa Claus, though this knowing wasn't expressed out loud. He was happy to play along and gain the benefits.  I am happy he didn't want to ruin the fun for his younger brother, who was only 8 at the time and believed in it all. My older son did not seem to feel betrayed but viewed it all as some kind of "game" that Mom & Dad like to play – not with the intention to deceive them but with the intention to simply play and have some good fun. The awareness of true reality seeps in slowly and gently. I could clearly sense the disbelief behind the weak affirmations that came from my older son back then. Our boys received a one-ounce gold coin for every tooth they lost. It was an investment that we made for them. Someday, we hope they will feel certain that we "valued" them highly because we selflessly invested so much in them. It was been a difficult commitment to honor for our younger son when times became financially hard but we somehow made it all the way through.  It always was a happy game that none of us minded playing.

~ perspective

There is a stability in the
observation of the seasons
as the same holidays pass
through a life over time.
Change is constant but the
recurrence of the moon's
cycles, of holidays and seasons,
bring a point of stillness to
any individual life even though
our observances may change
over time.
Passing through change while yet
honoring repetition and tradition
is a balancing wholeness.
Our perception of holidays change
from childhood to adulthood and
when we pass the traditions on to
our children we are able to
experience the perspective of
our own parents to some degree.
There is no sad price to pay
if practices are continued in
good fun and not intended to
deceive but are done for the
pure joy of doing it.

#change #children #cycles #death #differences #experiences #learning #memories #play #ritual