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| Left: My Major Arcana of the Year 2016, Theme of the Year 2016, and Card of the Month (February). Right: Money Tree, Our Lady, Egg and Ashes as my personal markers for Lent, for Ash Wednesday and Easter, my personal reminders of my mortality and my immortality, of Love, of Eros and of Agape. The candle is one of the four candles I lit during Advent in the four weeks before Christmas 2015. |
This weekend, the Year of the Sheep will be on its way out and on the 8th of February we will be entering the Year of the Monkey. Two days after that, on Wednesday the 10th, Ash Wednesday will mark the start of Lent. The start of forty days in waiting as we approach Easter.
Didn't I just do something similar for Advent? Yes. I did.
My Catholic mother said, that if we must choose between Christmas and Easter, the latter is always more important. That left an impression on me. Christmas just seemed to be so much more of a big deal. But this simple statement from my mother brought to my attention that it is the Death and Resurrection, not so much the Birth, that made the Faith.
A COMMUNITY IN A DIFFERENT TIME AND SPACE
Moving around twenty times over the course of about twenty years across several different countries, has not been conducive to community building, at least not in its traditional sense. In a physical-geographical sense.
The upside to this though is that without fellowship and with much traveling, the lack social accountability allows the mind to have more room to roam around. There was more space for the freedom to explore, to poke around, to contemplate, to choose between all the best possible options. Without the burden of having to fit in. Perhaps the occasional loneliness is a small price to pay.
We know that he markings of important events, the sharing of personal symbols, seeing and feeling that you are a part of something much bigger, is important. Intellectually I acknowledge this reality and carry on with life without it. A life in which this kind of communal level of sharing is absent, without missing a beat. It was when I found myself back among throngs of people doing the same things, feeling the same ways, connecting, communing over the same smells, sights, tastes, feels, sounds..... It was in moments like those that the reality of what I am missing often hit home.
So here I am missing this more communal aspect of being part of a larger community of peoples. And here I am sharing with you what I have tried to do to mark Lunar New Year and Lent in my own way this year. A way that is personal to me, which I hope can assist in emotionally connecting to the reality of being part of a community in a different time and space. Something that is a privilege to have experienced, but I can no longer experience, at least not directly, due to being far away from a very geographically, historically, and culturally tied community (I.e. being an immigrant).
Maybe, this might be of some use to those out there who have found themselves in a similar emotional position. Of once being part of a larger community and now solitary, either by choice, or by default.
These are not rituals, not parts of any tradition. These are not supernatural, or religious, or cultural. These are personal, emotional, and spiritual.
MONEY TREE
Hello Monkey (Yes, Monkey. No, that is not a misspell of Money). The Year of The Fire Monkey.
In the process of inquiring for some vegetation which are often associated with the celebration of Lunar New Year, I obtained what is known - as I learned recently - as a money tree. The money tree I had in mind as it turned out is not a money tree at all. Shows how much I know (or not!) about these so called traditions.
What I had been looking for in my desperate attempt to replicate a sense of home in this new life is what actually known as pussy willows. The other thing that I wish I had is "lucky bamboo". I am not sure if this is its actual name even as I type this. All I know is that this bamboo spirals upwards (Or is it downwards?). If only I could find some. I could not.
It became apparent that this is going to be more of a mission that it should. So I took it as as sign, and settled for the stem of money tree I have been graciously given by a friend. The personal gesture embodied in it makes it rather special and I like it. Lunar new year seems to always be closely associated with prosperity anyway, and what better way to symbolise this than with a plant which is actually known as a money tree.
I place the money tree stem, in the soda bottle filled water it came in (I drank the soda during the visit), behind the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. Since taking the picture I am sharing here, I have also added a jar of coins which so far has been floating around our kitchen. It (and the money tree) will return to the kitchen after the 15th day of Lunar New Year.
MY MORTALITY, MY IMMORTALITY.
FLOWERS AND ASHES
Eros and Agape.
I am also fairly certain that I won't make it to an Ash Wednesday service or mass, as I have never managed to go for some years now. The motivation to commune is low, the fellowship is lacking. Without a physical face to face community, where to go for a service or mass is always a decision made on an ad hoc basis (I could go to my mother's church, but as I said, the motivation to commune is lacking at the moment, and there is no point to go to one without a genuine desire to fellowship with people there).
Traditionally, we would receive ashes on our foreheads applied in form of a cross. This is a nod to an ancient practice, which was done by the throwing of ashes onto our person as a mark of grief (I think this ritual is still practiced in some parts of the world today, I can't be sure). This is not doctrinal, it is not canonical. It is a practice created by communities of believers, consisting of humans and their needs for outward gestures and symbols. The ashes are usually created from dried palm branches. When and where I grew up, these palm branches were often brought back to church by the congregation who would have received them as fresh palm branches on Palm Sunday the year before. Not so much these days where I live now.
Here, today, I chose to purify in fire, a bouquet of dried and shedding lilies and roses, send to me for my birthday several months ago by someone who is very important to me. Someone who taught me what love looks like.
I contemplated drying them as soon as I received them. When the stems and petals are still fresh, strong, and young. This means preventing them from ever blooming fully. I decided to let them bloom.
For the first time, in 15 years, I decided to let the flowers come to full bloom. To finally bear the sight of their slow demise.
To face the ending I could never face for a long time. (I am not talking about the flowers anymore now).
In the full expression of life lies the full expression of death.
It seems fitting to me at the moment, that this particular bouquet should be the ashes that I hope to mark Ash Wednesday with.
Eros and Agape.
Flowers and ashes.
ASHES
Ashes. To remind myself of my mortality.
In a similar way that skulls are often used to remind ourselves of our mortality. To keep ourselves humble and to keep things in perspective, when we are working with powers that are often greater than ourselves. To keep us firm on our feet, grounded, when we are reaching for the higher planes. To remember that although the forces that we are working with are immortal, in our current form, we are not.
For the moment, the only "forces" I am working with is the "Causa Prima". (My relationship with Mother Mary is in its redefinition phase).
To remind myself to be humble, in my mortality, and to be thankful, of my immortality (beyond our current form).
AN EGG
The egg is a symbol of life, fertility, birth, rebirth. Here, I choose to put an egg in this space to remind myself of the end of Lent, and of Easter.
Of all the symbols I have chosen here, this is the one which made me the most nervous. In the old country, ancient spiritual and supernatural practices often rely on a fresh egg as an item through which we fulfil the condition placed by the spirit world which requires the sacrificing, or the giving, of a "life". I am not talking animal sacrifice or blood, although that might happened too sometimes, I would not know.
Because of this, my plan is to empty it from its "life", and keep only its shell. This way, all it would be is a symbol, a visual aid that I need it to be.
The continuing rebirth of hope.
The rebirth of new things. Of what follows after death. Of what always follows after each death. In which we are immortal.
HAVE A BLESSED SEASON EVERYONE!
Have a blessed season for those among you who are marking Imbolc this month, and the incoming Ostara.
Many blessings for the Year of the Fire Monkey.
Peace be with if you observe Lent.
I will see you if not during, then after Lent, when we will emerge again, like Lazarus, resurrected to new lives, and new hopes.
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