Cemeteries

I adore cemeteries and have my entire life. Aside from just being who I am, I also think my having spent a great deal of time as a small child helping my mother and grandmother clean up the family plots in various cemeteries also encouraged this comfort I feel at gravesites. I get a sense of peace, of calmness, of a quiet serenity peppered with a bit of fear when, however briefly, I am faced with the idea of my own mortality. When I was younger, I used to fear being buried in the ground and made everyone I thought would outlive me promise to build me a small mausoleum in which to spend my eternity. But given my whole-hearted embrace of mother earth and all she has to offer, coupled with the fact that mausoleums are grandly expensive and I am but a lowly commoner, I've learned to make peace with the idea of sleeping beneath the ground. Being at one with the earth once again isn't such a bad thing.

Cemeteries are wonderful storyboards of people from the distant (and not so distant) past, with their headstones lichen-covered snapshots into the lives- and deaths- of those who went before. Buddhism tells us not to fear death but rather embrace it, meditate on it and learn to love the idea of it for in accepting our mortality we are able to understand more fully what it means to live. To vanquish this fear frees us to truly live in the moment. Be not attached to anything (including fears and worries) and you will end your suffering on this earthly plane.

Not too long ago I began keeping a photographic journal of very old cemeteries here in New England; honoring those who have passed before me and experiencing my own sense of where I fit in in this vast timeline of people (click on the link at the bottom of this post to see my photo journal). There's nothing quite like a quiet interlude in an old graveyard. A friend recently told me about a headstone in Connecticut of a family killed together during the summer of 1777 and the epitaph on that stone says it all:

"Death like an overflowing stream sweeps us all away.
Our Life's a Dream, an empty Tale,
A Morning Flower, cut down and withered in an hour."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mercuryglassmoon/sets/72157622641903918/

What Am I?

When talk turns to religion and I'm asked what exactly I am, in all honesty, I haven't a clue how to answer. I can say I'm a witch, because I am. I write and cast spells, I work with oils and brews and herbal mixtures. I dabble in the metaphysical every day. I cast a circle and work within it. But my Native American ancestors also cast circles and used medicine wheels as tools of their faith and I use the circle in that manner too. I am a practicing pagan who honors and follows the rhythms of the earth as she spins through her calendar year. I live by the stars and the ever-changing moon. I also spent more than ten years of my life seriously studying Buddhism and today in my rituals and my daily life I try to continue to practice the teachings of The Four Noble Truths even though I would not consider myself a proper Buddhist. I meditate, I follow an ayurvedic diet and have dabbled in Hindu beliefs as well. Do I believe in God? Yes, but not in the way a Christian or Jew might. I used to attend a Buddhist Temple, but I haven't been inside an actual church in more years than I can count. So what exactly am I? Does my rather extensive patchwork of beliefs and practices go beyond even what an eclectic follower would term eclectic? Most likely. Some days I think my crazy spiritual smorgasbord is pretty cool and others I feel utterly schizophrenic.

This is the time of year when so many people ask what my plans are for the holidays and wish me a Merry Christmas. And I readily wish them one back as it's easier than explaining that I don't celebrate Christmas, but rather Yule. But then there are those people who like to question things a bit more deeply. When I say I'm not a Christian, they ask me if I'm Jewish, and try to wish me a Happy Hanukah, but I have to politely say that I'm not Jewish either. And that's where it gets tricky. No one wants to stand there and hear a long drawn out, ridiculous-sounding explanation of what I am, or what I'm not. Trying to tell them I'm a wildly eccentric mix of multiple belief systems only elicits even more questions and more than a few odd- and frequently uncomfortable- looks. I'm not interested in hiding what I am, nor in being clever in how I explain myself, but I do wish I had a quick and simple answer to the question of what I am. But since I have yet to figure out the answer to this question for myself, how on earth am I supposed to explain it to someone else?

Photo courtesy of PictureOnTheWall/Nicholas McCollum.