Honor the dead. Be at peace.

Every other Tuesday I attend a meditation group in a private home. I am undoubtedly one of the world's worst contemplatives but, fortunately, that does not preclude grace. When I meditate, good stuff happens.

Last night I emerged with two phrases bouncing around in my head:

"Honor the dead"

and

"Be at peace"

It is often easy to see whence such thoughts emerge. I am nearing the end of a novel that I began writing almost sixteen months ago. The basic storyline has been in my head for over thirty years but until last April nothing more than ideas and outlines had reached paper. Now it is a vast, sprawling work that has been a joy and revelation to write.

I am in the midst of the chapter that honors the dead. Our heroes have returned from their quest and before the feasting must come the mourning.

I find it difficult to "kill off" my characters. One becomes attached to them. So there is, for me, a very real experience of grief. Scenes such as the one now facing me are very satisfying but also rather difficult to write.

That said, the provenance of the imperative to honor the dead is obvious. But what else are the Spirit and my deeper self telling me?

The recent post about "primal stuff" was a look back at my ancestors and ancestral soil (in terms of where I was born anyway; let's ignore Northern Europe for now). The whole enterprise of writing a cycle of stories is about my interior journey. While my genre is fantasy fiction, I am still following the advice to "write what you know." So I draw on all kinds of mythic themes and the mystery and vagaries of human behavior to tell tales and then sit back to ponder what I am telling myself about myself. The Chronicles are no roman à clef; my life is not narrated in them. Nonetheless, there are not only geographic and narrative snippets lifted from my own experiences but also substantive themes woven throughout. Here is where I see my heart's issues revealed. It is all very healing but now that I have typed this I suddenly feel very vulnerable. Well, that is the price of writing, eh?

This is a photo of my father sitting on his father's lap. It was a very splotchy photo and I tried to clean it up in Photoshop. Doing so was one act of honoring the dead. Grandfather died when I was only six years old, so I have very minimal memories of him. He lived on the farm half an hour south of where we lived, and he was often away supervising construction to earn money to pay for the farm. The only images I have of his face are from photographs.

You see in this photo two perfectionists. Scary stuff. I am a recovering perfectionist.

What struck me about honoring the dead was that we cannot healthily move into the future while either denying the past or running from it, on the one hand, or clinging to it or being trapped in it on the other. By honoring the dead, literally and figuratively, we acknowledge where we come from and have the option to accept and integrate the past. This provides stability and continuity, of course, but it also frees us for the future.

Arlington West, borrowed via Panda Songs

Now I face the task of writing a scene to honor the fallen: a healer, a warmaiden, a merchant, a fearless and foolhardy earl and the soldiers who perished with him, a princess who gave her life to save her daughter, a prince who led his companions to slaughter through pride and envy, victims of plague, victims of a demon. They are fictional echoes of all our race, those who die of disease, accident, war, or simply age. As Linda Loman says in Death of a Salesman, "He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person."

In order to tell tales and feast the heroes we must first honor those who do not return. They are part of the immense price paid that life may continue. As I have recounted in an earlier post, a flood of tears seems to have been released in me on Memorial Day weekend. My heart has been "tender" ever since. It feels right and good, and ultimately a joyous thing, to have easy access to tears. I have no doubt I will weep as I type because it is not just about my fictional characters, it is about the folly, suffering, and mortality of us all.

Making peace with the past is part of being at peace, and that, I guess, is the link.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov said: "Be at peace within your heart and thousands around you will be saved."

In these troubled times for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, I suspect that much good might be accomplished by those whose hearts remain at peace, placing their whole faith in God and not being reactive to what others say or do. We have so much positive work to accomplish in faith, hope, and love.

Yes, we must work out issues of estrangement and divorce. Hey, this shit happens to the most wonderful people who do their best to love. [That should take care of my G-rating.] One need not demonize in order to realize that we can't always make our relationships work. We are limited, imperfect, broken, willful creatures, OK? Life gets messy. May we open our hearts to go through such separations as may occur with as much grace, charity, humility, and good will as possible. That way we can look back and bless each other instead of curse. It can be done.

I have always wanted to see a bumpersticker that reads:
May we acknowledge the former and abide in the latter!
--the BB