Feast of the Dead

Last weekend I attended an Interfaith Sanctuary to attend the Feast of the Dead, held yearly to remember our ancestors, to pray with and for those who mourn, and to honor friends, mentors, and relatives who have passed beyond the veil.

Held in a campground, we are in touch with earth, air and water. We live close beside our planetary family, the plants and animals. We experience the autumn cold nights and the glowing leaf fall days. We hear the tree toads--the very last--singing after sundown. We watch birds, raptors, and the winged clean-up crew, the buzzards, soar on thermals.

This helps us to reconnect ourselves with feet-on-the-ground reality, to remember that all we truly have is the precious present. We hope to leave behind as much of the work-a-day, with so many pressures, so many daily frustrations, punishing schedules, and night-time's electronic opiate distractions. We step away from the terror and injustice, to escape a society drenched in money madness, where selfishness and greed are admired, as best we can, if only for a few days.

Here, we remember the past, back to the morning when we left our palm frond huts and began the long walk out of Africa. We honor those who came before us; we rededicate ourselves to those who will come after us.

One of the services was an interfaith Missa* with spoken prayers from many dove-tailed belief systems. I wanted to share some of these, to preserve a memory of a place beyond the endless noise machine of modernity. Although we prayed many  prayers familiar to Christians (notably Hail Mary and Psalm 23) but there were also many others of great spiritual power.

Hindu

Shanti - Shanti - Shanti

Om - Shanti

May there be peace in the higher realms;

May there be peace in the firmament;

May there be peace on earth.

May the water flow peacefully;

May the herbs and plants grow peacefully;

May all the divine powers bring us to peace

The Supreme Lord is peace

May we all be in peace, peace and only peace;

And May that peace come unto each of us.

~~ Hindu

Yoruban Ancestor Prayer

May those from under our feet

Breathe the warmth of community until us

So that the peace we seek mounts our bodies

And sits on the chairs of our heart,

Sprinkling love and joy around us all.

Excerpt from “Breaths”

Listen more often to things than to beings.

Listen more often to things than to beings.

‘Tis the ancestor’s breath when the fire’s voice is heard.

‘Tis the ancestor’s breath in the voice of the waters.

And to close:

May the blessing of the spirits be upon you.

May you be your best self. May you walk in beauty.

May your guides be with you at every crossroads.

May you be honorably greeted when you arrive.

Shared by Juliet Waldron, all prayers taken from the Interfaith Sanctuary Missa
All Saints/All Souls Spiritual Service

*Santeria

Black Magic ~~ Shapeshifter!

Goran uses shape-shifting to visit

the other 'powers' who dwell on his mountain

  

           Goran turned and found himself standing on a high rock shelf above a hollow filled with thorns. He saw the eyes, gazing out at him. Glowing, bright living eyes, green fire! He’d only thought of the Great Boar, the eyes in the thicket down in the oak woods—and suddenly, he was there.

            I thought you might be here.

            And so I am, Great One.

            What is it about that particular rock, Lord, that you like so much?

            Wanting to make some sort of an answer, Goran gazed down at his feet and then rather wished he hadn’t. It was shocking to see what they had become, his legs ending in the talons of a bird of prey. The rock below was ordinary granite, dotted with a few white flecks of marble. As he did this, a little puzzled, a buzzing rush of energy blasted into his feet.

     Aha! This rock is an excellent place, full of power!

                               

~ Juliet Waldron ~

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Don Giovanni Weather with Ghosts

http://amzn.to/1TDh07s  My Mozart  ISBN:  1927476364

What we’ve had here today has been sun, clouds, and a sort of golden light falling through autumnal trees that I call Don Giovanni weather. And what, you ask, makes me call it that? Well, it’s the end of October now and we are approaching Halloween, the time of year, when, in 1787, to thunderous applause, this opera first debuted. The city was Prague, not Vienna, because, by that time the arbiters of taste in the latter city had decided that Mozart was NOT cool anymore. The infamous con man, Casanova, may have sat in with Lorenzo DaPonte, while the libretto was written. (Back then, the  guy who wrote the words was called “the poet.”) 

When I entered one of those demented OCD states of mind to which I am prone, in the mid-eighties, it was All Mozart All The Time at our house. I began to write two Mozart novels, “Mozart’s Wife” and “My Mozart.” Wouldn’t want anyone reading the titles to wonder what the subject was.

http://amzn.to/1Vy47lm  Mozart’s Wife  ISBN:  1461109612

It happened on a Saturday. Outside, it was doing the classic autumn change over. The silver maples were a staggering yellow that year. The azure sky ( I’m not exaggerating) had been clear all morning, but suddenly, the wind rose and a fleet of puffy, gray-bottomed clouds began to put  a lid on the clear as a bell part of the day. I was doing housework, still attempting the working woman’s bit where you try to do double time and do lots of housework and cooking over weekends. Of course, I was blasting Don Giovanni, absolutely saturating my cells with every note—just as I used to do all through the '60's and ‘70’s with rock’n’roll.     

Husband was off somewhere, and the house was empty of teenage sons, too, so the only nerves I was exercising were my own. In those days I had a fabulous pair of pink high top sneakers that looked killer good with jeans. Jeepers, this was a long time ago--back in the last century...

What happened in my kitchen that afternoon is the only supernatural encounter I’ve had in this house. I’d been making a stromboli for the family, starting with making dough.  I think there genuinely are no ghosts in the structure; this house was built in 1948. There has been anger and grief, but no death. So, in this case the "supernatural" experience focused on me.

To say plain, I'd overdosed on Mozart. And, on this day, too much Don Giovanni, too much dwelling in and on the stories of the past in which I had been immersed, imagining and then writing. This led the strong personality of that singular, charismatic personality, drawn by hero-worship as well as the sound of his music, to pass the gate.

I heard a loud creak, and spun around--dough laid out and ready to receive the layer of meat, cheese, tomato and sweet pepper. There he stood, standing on my 1948-era brick pattern linoleum. Needless to say, after all those long dead years he looked terrible—the “great nosed Mozart” as a contemporary called him. He was gaunt, frail, and his face was lined with suffering, but he was undeniably present.

.

From "The Mozart Brothers" 

Saw him clear as day, I did. He had been heralded by a loud creak followed by an unearthly groan, that old movie sound of the hinges of hell—or, of heaven--swinging wide. It was so loud it overcame the Don, pouring from the kitchen speakers. I jumped backwards, all the way across the kitchen in those pink high top sneakers. By the time the time my feet hit the vinyl once again, Mozart was gone.  

~~Juliet Waldron

And, please, if you've got a moment, check out these talented

Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

  

Butterfly Bride (Sisters #2)

http://amzn.to/1Nn8iOw

I wanted to write another Pennsylvania story to continue the family story/romance begun in Hand-me-Down Bride, especially because setting plays such a large part in all my imaginings. After thirty + years, exploring the backroads and byways, first on my bicycle and later on the back of my husband's motorcycle, I'm found much to interest me in this uniquely American landscape.

The period, too, the pious and still shell-shocked 1870's, as Americans struggled to recover from the Civil War, still resonates in this landscape. Every hilltop church surrounded by sinking gravestones whispers ever so many tales. There are markers for soldiers from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War and onward, into the 21st century. There are men who married several wives, often followed by a sad trail of tiny gravestones. These are all those babies who didn't make it out of infancy back in those "good old days," and who sometimes appear to have caused the death of their mothers, all of them interred in a neat row.  The oldest gravestones are in German, speaking to the nationality of the first European settlers.  

Elfrieda, Sophie's little sister, started to reveal herself, along with her three suitors, each handsome, manly, and each "catches" in their own way. There's a rich young man, born to privilege, a laboring man whose pride and joy is a fast trotting horse, and a crippled veteran, now a Lutheran preacher.  Elfie, initially a careless butterfly, navigates through the rough water of her grown-up desires with the help of luck, love, forgiveness, and after a few painful life lessons. There is also a little help from scripture.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MEENIRA

Yes, this book is suitable for teen readers. Adults who don't want a lot of heavy breathing with their romantic, old-time country stories may appreciate the fact that character and good choices are important here, as is a little touch of redemption. 

~~Juliet Waldron

And, please, if you've got a moment, check out these talented

Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

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Butterfly Bride~~excerpt

Longing for excitement, Elfie is discovered by those reckless night rovers, Dina and Ripley, sitting in the porch swing after everyone else is asleep...

Coming this week to Books We Love

Elfie sat alone in the porch swing, rocking gently and enjoying the cool night air and the distant hiss of the millrace. She was tired too, certainly. Everything here was still so strange. There was so much work to do each every day. And every day started so early!

Still, she couldn’t get to sleep early like the rest of them, no matter what she did. She was grateful beyond measure that she wasn’t going to the wheat harvest as Sophie had had to last year.. Half awake and yawning, she’d stand at the sink and do dishes with Celeste’s help, and this allowed Ruby and Olive to get a head-start on dinner preparations. Then, in the brief lull which followed, listening to the sound of vegetables being chopped, she’d sit on the porch and, after rubbing some salve into her dry hands, drink a cup of bitter, strong coffee with a lot of milk and sugar, and nibble on whatever was leftover. It didn’t take her long to eat, as she’d never been much for a big breakfast, either, and then she could go down to the garden and weed or pick, or sit and sew, or—oh ghastly!—iron on the sweltering porch until the mill hands arrived for their dinner.

And the clean-up would begin all over again….

Sisters Series: Book One
Hand-me-Down Bride
Sophie's story

http://amzn.to/1Nn8iOw

Upstairs, the baby woke with a long snuffling cry. She heard the sound of movement and some muffled words, as Sophie arose. They must have just barely gone to sleep, Elfie thought, and almost at once were awakened again.

What a great deal of trouble babies were! She didn’t think she was ready for all of these things which came along with getting married. It seemed that there was enough work to do every day on a farm without adding a baby.

When she’d said that to Sophie, her sister had smiled with amusement and replied, “Well, then, little sister, we will just have to find you a city gentleman.”

Sometimes Elfie heard horses coming and going from the big house on the hill late in the evening. She’d learned it was Ripley King and his college friends. Not often that they drove down this street, though. Usually the sound faded away toward Grace Church Hill. Just over that, she’d learned, was a long straight road between cornfields on which the local wild boys raced their horses on moonlit nights. Karl admitted to having indulged himself in this when he’d first come home after the war. Apparently, his fine horse, Buck, had won quite a few races that summer, a thing he was both a little proud of and also, nowadays, a little embarrassed.

Tonight, as Elfie listened, she heard the distant clop-clop-clop of a trotting horse. And sure enough, it was, for down the road below the house came the rattle of a trap, and the rhythmic sound of hooves on the summer-hard dirt.

Well, this was something different!

The horse slowed. Then, at a walk, she heard the carriage turn into the lane that led to the house. Elfie stood and picked up the lantern turned low which she’d set on the side table. Holding it, she illuminated the steps sufficiently to go down.

Geese began a jittering squawking noise in the barn as the trap approached. “Whoa,” someone said softly, and it drew to a stop.

“Miss Elfie Neiman!” A feminine voice pitched low called. “Is that you?”

Elfie, intrigued, walked closer and lifted her lantern to reveal a shiny trap drawn by a big chestnut horse with a white mane and tail, one she’d seen before. The horse tossed his head and snorted, not much liking to stop. Looking down at her from the seat was a blonde girl in a spoon bonnet about her age. Driving, which she’d known as soon as she’d had a good look at the horse, was that very same fellow from the train station wearing a straw Nattie hat at a rakish angle. His white teeth flashed as he smiled down at her.

The young woman extended a gloved hand. Elfie, using the one which was free, reached up for a clasp.

“This is terribly improper, I know, but I wanted so much to meet you! I’m Miss Dina Wildbach, niece to your brother-in-law, Mr. Karl. As soon as Mr. King told me you were living here, I’ve wanted so much to meet you. I’ve just come out from Columbia to stay for the summer with my grandfather, Judge Markham...”



~~Juliet Waldron

And, please, if you've got a moment, check out these talented

Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines