Our lawn looks as gorgeously bright green as ever this time of year, yet red light strings and fake cobwebs littering the neighbors’ porches tell me it is ghoul season and could snow at any moment. Is the scary season in full swing where you live? My focus remains on earthy autumn color and how the light changes as rays travel through thinning trees. But halloween is big business in America.
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Halloween, Disguises & Earthy Autumn Color
After all these decades, I never truly could make friends with Halloween and every year mask my ___. I’m trying to think of a term that fits even if it makes me sound pompous or dismissive.
Indifference? Annoyance? Cognitive dissonance? Pity? Aversion at a gut level?
As a child, my favorite Halloween thing was apples–tasting different varieties, enclosing them in caramel, and most of all, sculpting them into interesting aged faces. The passing days dehydrated the peeled and carved apple’s shape before I would glue on bits of cotton for hair.
I never wanted to step near a haunted house then or now.
I think I understood at a fairly young age that hauntings are not made up. That poking fun at fake hauntings would not make traveling spirits less scary. In my 30s, I once spent an evening in a mansion for a group dinner and private concert in a place that turned out to be haunted.
I experienced invisible spirits moving matter violently with my own eyes, ears, and nervous system. There could be no denial or repression since the whole group experienced all of the phenomena.
I can say with confidence that avoiding or remaining intellectually uninterested in the shadow side of spirit realms or supernatural hauntings (as I mostly do), may not insulate us from confrontations that are anything but pretend.
Is this why commercializing Halloween feels so wrong for me? Is Halloween still about scaring away spirits that would harm us?
Googling tells me our $11 billion second largest holiday in America grew from the folklore of 19th-century Irish and Scottish immigrants.
Millions of these folks brought harvest traditions such as Samhain and mischief-making to the U.S. when they fled the potato famine of the 1800s.
Celtic and Irish traditions involved costume wearing and carving root vegetables as protection from spirits between the living world and the afterlife.
I consider my own heritage (I’m basically 2/3 English and 1/3 Irish/Celtic) and wonder if somewhere within me, the Old World whispers: these new world attempts to distort and monetize with scary symbols, guises, and chocolate eating miss the mark…good, evil, thin places, greed, and integrity issues are soul issues.
And maybe a part of me wonders: imagine if we rip off scary disguises and gaze into the mirror of our conscience and soul to find that mix of saint and sinner with a side of “prone to wander.”
I don’t know much of anything as a fan of fall but not Halloween stores, yet I am listening.
This harvest season, I spend much time in spiritual practice, emptying myself and surrendering thoughts and agendas in favor of silent spaciousness where I meet God and feel most at home.
It’s not necessary to understand the mechanics of how the divine gets to work in such thin space. I only know it’s as real to me as my physical world.
Growing in This Harvest Season
We are all living through an extraordinary, revolutionary period of history that is evolving and remains uncertain. As my faith grows in this final third of my life, I’m getting more rooted in the now and less fearful.
A spiritual teacher of wisdom I admire, Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, said this on her substack in March:
“Even in this tiny space I presently occupy I can strive with all my heart to seed into the future my highest understanding of what it means to ‘be made in the image and likeness of God’; to hold the highest note I can hold as a human being. I can quietly commit my life to the inner work of catalyzing within myself those higher spiritual substances through which this world is ultimately transformed—love, joy, forbearance, kindness, gentleness, self-control; “the fruit of the spirit,” as St Paul called them. These are not organic substances; they do not come naturally to the human animal; they are produced only through the conscious alchemy of the human heart. That is what we humans are called to bring to the continuing evolution of our planet.”
Seed into the future! Cynthia Bourgeault is incredibly wise, conscious, and gifted as a writer so it almost feels as though I’m making up the fact that I was content creator for her organization’s Twitter account for several years. I was allowed the creative freedom to post my original paintings, photography, and mixed media art combined with Cynthia’s words and inspirational quotes from other contemplatives.
What an honor to carry forward this responsibility under the radar as a volunteer, and the only reason there was time to volunteer was because of non-acceptance into a contemplative spiritual program. Psst. I was busy with whole house DIY renovating at our former fixer upper (above) at the time.
I assumed my high achieving self would make a sweet addition to that lovely eclectic assemblage of contemplatives…
Nope! Hahahaha! What a humbling chapter. The application process had been rigorous and lengthy with essay questions I answered vulnerably and wholeheartedly.
When my rejection letter arrived, it stated more than a simple we have decided not to add you to this year’s cohort. It also included something along the lines: you could reapply another year, but it’s not likely you’ll get in.
I initially felt heartbroken and silly. Especially when friends asked how the program was going since they also thought I’d be welcomed into that fold.
I wondered whether a spiritual immaturity was revealed in my responses and if something questionable in recommendation letters (which I never read) raised red flags.
Before long, I recovered my sense of humor about it.
Bourgeault is on the faculty of that program, and I doubt the associates managing her social media knew I was rejected. Instead of becoming distanced from her wisdom work and centering prayer, I dug into it more deeply and played a different role in relative anonymity.
If you’re wondering how any of this history relates to the spooky season or earthy autumn color, I’m not certain I know. I write to discover both what I think I know and what I don’t understand.
I guess I’m thinking about disguises. Trying to ward off evil to stay safe instead of examining our own shadow is a popular way to live in America these days. We can’t see what we’re up to, and we’re often not humble enough to do the excavation work.
We use disguises and other defensive means to keep the spirits away, but we forget how much grace and prayer we need. We forget to look inward at our own ghosts.
We like feeling in control of our lives, taking action, making plans, gaining power and doing as we please. AND we would like to be completely protected and taken care of.
As I see more clearly that God is ever arriving disguised as my life (in the ordinary, in the joy, in the suffering, in nature, in relationships), it is easier to allow it all. As I let go of various costumes, performative nonsense, defensive postures, and falsehoods that promise safety, I can live integrally.
To stop telling lies and listening to lies demands change and courage, but the pay off is freedom. Removing the masks frees the true self. I became attached to an idea that belonging to a specific spiritual community would properly connect me with the right contemplatives.
I can now see how the closing of that door opened opportunities I could not have imagined myself.
To move through my life as a soul at rest, soft and permeable and not clinging to outcomes? This is what feels like my greatest good and deepest healing. It is the humble posture necessary to grow in compassion and love to serve others.
With a soul at rest, I find my sense of humor. I naturally gravitate toward nature, the seasons, the moon, and the cosmos. I become conscious that I am not simply inhabiting a planet.
We ARE the earth. There is plenty of spooky stuff along this journey. Right where I am I can point to endless examples of falsehood and evil dressed up as good. You see it in religion, social systems, inequality, white supremacy, and governing. But I love what Cynthia Bourgeault says about seeding into the future. We can skip the trap of teeth-rotting Skittles and Twizzlers for the fruit of the spirit.
An American Halloween is cute lil’ toddler goblins, sweet costume parades, and a supreme stimulator of economies right behind Christmas. Yes, I am nodding with you as you sigh geez Louise, weenie, it’s a few bags of Hershey kisses and a month of 8-feet tall skeletons on suburban lawns..are you even American? I faked smiles for years for the sake of our trick or treating kids. Halloween means something different to us all, and for me, it is the joy I feel knowing there are 364 days until the next one. Hahahahaha.
Gentle Autumn Quietude
Layering for fall is a relative matter. I’m a minimalist so my rooms stay spare even when I toss a few pillows and a throw into the mix.
Is orange optional?
Absolutely.
My Zuma rugs look good in every room!
Oh I love all of the evidence pointing to cozy factor with white.
The warmth of this vanity is such an amazing moment in this otherwise cool toned bath:
I could never tire of the baby boos.
Don’t miss the continuation of the cozy gentle autumn ideas in THIS.
Peace to you right where you are.
-michele
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