Celebrating the Dead
For something different with the students I decided to do a lecture exploring the Mexican day of the dead. The main reason for this was to practice the critical evaluation process for religious events. I choose Dia de Los Muertos as I guessed (rightly) that they did not have a pre-existent understanding of the religious, cultural and theological elements of the celebration. Great summary of the festival can be read here.
Last week I had the privilege of speaking at my Nan's funeral. At over 90 after a full and varied life my nan was happy to move on. The funeral service was an uplifting event where we all got to remember stories from Nan's life and celebrate her life and faith. It was great and a lovely way to say good bye. Sadly with our British attitude to death we may not often again remember her in this way. Scared of upsetting and causing offence people become reluctant to ask questions or even mention her again. This is not universally true but it defiantly happens.
My Sister, Jayne, died when I was 18 and for years one of the most painful things was people either avoiding me and my family or avoiding even mentioning Jayne's name. I think we don't have any reference points culturally about how or when to talk about and remember the dead. In this vacuum of tradition we end up turning death into this social taboo that should not be named. We run from death and try to ignore it at every corner.
I believe we have a lot to learn from the Mexican way of celebrating death during Dia de Los Muertos. Their attitude and respect for remembering those who have died create a social time where families can naturally come together in joy. Taking time to think of about the good times with departed family members. I think key to this is a much more light hearted attitude towards death. Something the Mexicans seem to have sorted.
Let me finish with a quote I heard on a BBC programme about Dia de Los Muertos, I'll let you decide what it means and if it is a good thing for us to say.
For something different with the students I decided to do a lecture exploring the Mexican day of the dead. The main reason for this was to practice the critical evaluation process for religious events. I choose Dia de Los Muertos as I guessed (rightly) that they did not have a pre-existent understanding of the religious, cultural and theological elements of the celebration. Great summary of the festival can be read here.
In my own research for the lecture I tried to read as much as I could about the Mexican tradition and the wider catholic tradition of All Saints and All Souls day. In all my research I was stuck by one over arching idea. Death is not a taboo subject that is feared in Mexico. Death is celebrated as an essential, positive and even humorous part of existence. The festivals seems to have two sides, the remembering of dead relatives (with associated belief of the souls returning to earth) and the celebration of death. Both sides intrigue me but I am hesitant about the belief in souls returning. I am not claiming it is impossible (I think it may be impossible but I'm not certain) I am claiming that the story when King Saul had the Witch of Endor call up the soul of Samuel, (from 1Samuel 28:3–25) makes it clear trying to talk with dead is a bad idea.
However, I feel Dia de Los Muertos is about remebering and celebrating those who have died before us and this is something that I beleive we could do with more in our culture and community, especially in the western evangelical protestant tradition. I think we fear death. Twice in recent years I have been at a Sunday church service where it would have been completely appropriate and suitable to spend time thinking about those who had died but instead of taking time to simply 'remember' the church leader felt the need to ignore death and launch a campaign for peace or interfaith dialogue. I felt let down. Why should we forget those who have died
Last week I had the privilege of speaking at my Nan's funeral. At over 90 after a full and varied life my nan was happy to move on. The funeral service was an uplifting event where we all got to remember stories from Nan's life and celebrate her life and faith. It was great and a lovely way to say good bye. Sadly with our British attitude to death we may not often again remember her in this way. Scared of upsetting and causing offence people become reluctant to ask questions or even mention her again. This is not universally true but it defiantly happens.
My Sister, Jayne, died when I was 18 and for years one of the most painful things was people either avoiding me and my family or avoiding even mentioning Jayne's name. I think we don't have any reference points culturally about how or when to talk about and remember the dead. In this vacuum of tradition we end up turning death into this social taboo that should not be named. We run from death and try to ignore it at every corner.
I believe we have a lot to learn from the Mexican way of celebrating death during Dia de Los Muertos. Their attitude and respect for remembering those who have died create a social time where families can naturally come together in joy. Taking time to think of about the good times with departed family members. I think key to this is a much more light hearted attitude towards death. Something the Mexicans seem to have sorted.
Let me finish with a quote I heard on a BBC programme about Dia de Los Muertos, I'll let you decide what it means and if it is a good thing for us to say.
"Life is just a dream, only in death are we fully awake."
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