Category: Halloween

Fear

10/28/2015

Fear

Dear old and new friends,

     If a cosmic stranger from another solar system visited Planet Earth this coming weekend of October 31st, he/she or it might surmise Earth folk were celebrating some kind of a Festival of Fear. Stores and homes are decked out with a variety of scary images of death, flying witches and bats. Children and adults parade around dressed up in frightening masks and costumes. But far from being afraid, all seem to be having fun.

     Halloween is a fun holiday, but those fears haunting many aren’t funny! Halloween—the Eve of All Hallows, all holy ones—challenges us to live the words the angel Gabriel spoke to Mary, “Do not be afraid”; the same words often used by Jesus of Nazareth. The admonition to “fear not” appears over and over in Christian scriptures! If you repeat those affirming words aloud to yourself daily as your morning prayer, imagine the consequences!

     Being afraid (something adults are ashamed to admit) can be attached to a particular threat…some authoritarian person, snakes, flying, growing old, the dark, being a failure, or that most common fear of having to stand up alone and speak to a large audience. Fears can come and go as we move from one age to another, or grow into toxic worry.

     As a Catholic looking back at my youth, I believe I suffered from the disease of Toxic Worry. The psychiatrist Edward Hallowell (and no, that’s not a play on Halloween) describes it as a disease of the imagination that is insidious and invisible like a virus that worms its way into your consciousness where it actually dominates your life. Toxic worry shrinks your enjoyment of life, cripples your creativity and your ability to love. I picked up the virus of this disease from the Baltimore Catechism and its moral teachings. Back in those days I feared the occasions of sin, and that could include motion pictures, magazine photos, your thoughts, meat on Friday, even your friends, it seemed. Really, just about anything.

     The toxic (meaning poisonous) worry like all infections spreads to life itself, and while it continues to involve religion, it moves beyond it to anxiety about yourself and how you appeared to others, your popularity, your failures or successes. Marvelously miraculous is the human body in its self-healing abilities to mend wounds, and so too the mind which, with maturity, causes some fears to disappear. However, there can be those deeply embedded fears that remain. I was fortunate to find a mentor who helped me resolve my toxic worry by simply having me meditate on these liberating words: “Perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)

     So if you are burdened with some fear, I suggest you slowly love and accept whatever worries you, along with all of life’s problems and threats. Strive to truly love yourself; all your body, your mind, talents and inabilities, blunders and attainments, as you daily pray with zeal, “Do not be afraid!”

Your Appointment

10/29/2014

2 Comments

Your Appointment

Dear old and new friends,

To introduce our reflection for this week that celebrates Halloween on Friday, the 31st of October, I turned to E.E. Cummings ungrammatical poem about Buffalo Bill.

“Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlike that
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death”

You and I, like Buffalo Bill, have an appointment with Mister Death. He seems to be everywhere and could tap anyone of us on the shoulder and say smiling, “Excuse me.” Funerals have nothing in common with this Friday’s Halloween except for the presence of Mister Death. Halloweens are playfully cheery and fun, while funerals are sad and mournful occasions. Both Halloween and roller coasters were originally designed to scare and frighten us “to death,” but only roller coasters can still produce that first purpose of fright while Halloween Friday’s frolicking fun festival only entertains us.

Mister Death is your invisible passenger seated next to you when that roller coaster takes its sudden, lethal, breath-taking 200 foot plunge. He is invisibility seated next to you at every dangerous racecar event. We find Mister Death’s presence both thrilling and spine chillingly fearful. Our society has accomplished an amazing feat of cultural denial of death while day and night the news media plunges us into murders, school shootings, death by starvation, disease and war massacres. Perhaps we might be more conscious of Mister Death if we found him offering various ways to die in our Yellow Pages. Check your local directory for Death under several listing:

Mr. Sudden Unexpected Death Ms. Lingering Slow Death

Mr. Lonely All-Alone Death Ms. Guilt Nagging Death

Mr. Fear-Filled Death                            Ms. Dementia Alzheimer Death

Mr. Stroke Brain Death                         Ms. Physically Paralyzed Death

Mr. Angry Bitter Death Ms. Teenage Early Death

Mr. Violent Brutal Death Ms. Serene Peaceful Death

Regardless who comes calling, Death has an appointment with each of us that we hope will be cancelled…or at least postponed until a later date.

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A Post Halloween Parable

11/6/2013

A Post Halloween Parable

                                                The Traveling Salesman

The traveling salesman arrived on the afternoon train carrying two suitcases. On the side of one was painted Business and on the other Pleasure. He rented a room at Mrs. Murphy's Boarding House, and whenever he went out, everyone in town knew where he was headed. If he left Mrs. Murphy's house carrying the suitcase labeled Business, they knew he was on his way to work, even if he were going out to dinner. If he left carrying the suitcase marked Pleasure, he was out to have fun, even if he were going to work.
    The traveling salesman was never seen without one or the other of his suitcases, yet no one knew what was inside them. When asked, he would only grin, place his index finger to his lips and wink.
    Regardless of the secret contents of the suitcases, everyone found him charming both in business and socially. He was always perfectly at home in any situation. While swapping jokes and stories with the guys, if the phone would ring, snap-click and he was all business. Snap-click was the sound of the latch on his suitcase, which he opened and shut so quickly that you couldn't see what was taken out of it or put into it.
    Whenever someone was draining his patience, talking endlessly about some trivial matter, snap-click and instantly the traveling salesman's temperament would be transformed into Buddha-like serenity. Yet, although his face was serene, you could see his left leg bobbing up and down like an oil rig.
    While enjoying himself with friends at a cocktail party, if someone would grab his elbow, pull him aside and begin to monopolize him, his face would be that of a trapped animal. But, then, snap-click and in the flick of a latch, he would be the gracious, charming diplomat, eager to listen to the person's tale. As quickly as you can snap your fingers, his suitcase would be opened and closed, and the only indication it had even been unlatched was the faint snap-click.
    His success socially and in business was due to his ability to be comfortable with anyone and in any situation. Everyone in town loved his company, and his name was on every guest list. Yet, like any traveling salesmen, the day came when it was time to move on to the next town.
    However, tragically, on his way to the train station, he was crossing Main Street carrying his two suitcases when a driverless runaway truck struck him down and killed him. The truck's impact sent his suitcases flying out of his hands, high into the air and crashing back down to the street. As they hit the street, both suitcases split apart, scattering their contents on and around the body of the dead traveling salesman. The townsfolk gathered at the accident site stood open-mouthed, for he lay dead in the street surrounded by hundreds of different lifelike masks!

Dear old and new friends,

    Unlike the Traveling Salesman, you don’t have a suitcase full of different masks…but you do have a few favorite ones. Halloween being over, our masks and costumes are stored away for another year, or at least should be. Yet many, if not most, continue to wear masks since success in business and the marketplace, along with societal good manners, require appropriate disguises. However, when these fake faces are worn day after day, week after week, sadly they gradually become glued in place and so are worn even to bed at night.

    Masks are worn to hide our imperfections and more significantly to make us appear acceptable, a primal longing of each one of us. Death, the thief, steals not only life, it also removes all the masks of our various false selves, leaving it to the mortician to put on us a pretty face for our wake. A striptease is a major preparation to die! Take off any fake faces now before Death ultimately will remove them. Regardless of your age, in fact the earlier the better, strive to deal honestly with life and with death by being one-faced, your unique face.

    But being unmasked, how can I meet the requirements of a polite society like when a situation requires a pleasant happy face and I don’t feel happy? Don’t do something on the outside like putting on a smiley-face mask. Instead do something on the inside! Descend deeply down into the profound depths of your soul to touch that indestructible core of inner happiness, and then ascend upward to the surface and simply let your inner-happiness radiate outward.

Being Busy Strategically

10/31/2013

Being Busy Strategically

Dear old and new friends,

    An excellent spiritual Halloween exercise is to visit your future gravesite or any cemetery, and realistically ponder your death. But you don’t have to go to a cemetery to meditate on dying; just open your eyes to see the homes and front yards of your neighborhood decorated with spider webs, tombstones and grim skeletons. This Mortuary Mardi Gras called Halloween, with all its razzamatazz of masks and costumes, is our way of joking with our greatest fear—death! Instead of treating these fake skeletons comically, in turn let them become symbols of your future fate!

    Since childhood many of us have prayed, “Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.” These words were usually said thoughtlessly at the end of a longer prayer, so consider this tale.

        Thirty minutes from now you hear several loud knocks at
        your front door. Opening the door, you find old bony Death!
        Who of us wouldn’t say, “Oh, I am sorry Death, this isn’t a
        good time! Not this hour—or any hour today—for I must attend
        to unfinished business. I need to say an affectionate goodbye to
        loved ones and I’ve a pocketful of nagging unspoken apologies.
        Mr. Death, this really isn’t a convenient hour. Please come back
        at another time.” But as a sharp, chilling wind swirls up orange
        brown dead leaves around his bony legs, he smiles and beckons
        with a skinny skeletal finger: “Friend, that hour you’ve praying
        about for years and years, well this is it!”

    Unless you’re in hospice care, no convenient hour exists to die. When that fateful hour comes will we say, as did Queen Elizabeth I, “All my possessions for a moment more of time.”

    “Pray for us now and at the hour of our death” is a good prayer if it awakens you to get busy this very hour putting your affairs in order. It’s a beautiful prayer if it causes you to get busy making apologies to any you have wronged and also to invest each time you say “Goodbye” with all the love in your heart. The Prophet Mohammad wisely advised, “Die before you die.” Mohammad, along with history’s other great spiritual giants, knew dying wasn’t something you do at your last hour—it’s a way of life! It’s a lifestyle of dying to self to be available to others, dying to your own comfort so to comfort others, and of dying to old dogmatic beliefs so as to live new liberating ones.

    The mother of Goethe, the German poet and creator of Faust, replied to an invitation to a party, “I am sorry I can’t attend, I am busy dying!” Let Frau Goethe inspire you today to imitate her by being busy dying.

Safeguard Your Child-Heart

10/31/2012

Safeguard Your Child-Heart

Halloween has traditionally been for children who love dressing up in costumes as make-believe attire. In recent years adults have made it into an autumn Mardi Gras time with parties and the wearing of regalia and masks.

Regardless of your age, let this October 31st encourage you to add to your life that children’s occupation of play! I personally try to include it as part of my daily routine, and I encourage you my reader to do likewise. While appearing to be a waste of time, it is actually emotionally, psychologically and spiritually healthy. However, be forewarned it requires more discipline than physical exercise and lacks any sort of authoritative encouragement.

You can imagine my surprised delight to find strong approval for my childlike activities from a wisdom master, Confucius (551-479 BC), who said, “The great man is he would has not lost his child-heart!” I however rephrase this Chinese sage’s insight as, “Happy are those who have not lost their child-heart.” I do this because have you ever seen a playing child who wasn’t having fun? So those who haven’t lost their child-heart usually enjoy a happy lifestyle that doesn’t let the clock, their job or other duties prevent some childlike playful pretending.

Children’s play is rarely just fooling around. It is most often acting out a grown-up role with dolls or toy trucks as if already they were adults. Fantasizing the future isn’t only for kids because adulthood isn’t a static permanent state in life, but is forever fluid and changing. So use your child-heart’s imagination to create the kind of person you desire to be ten or twenty years from now.

If you neglect imagining, day-dreaming your future, you will be doomed to wake up some day trapped as a prisoner in disagreeable circumstances. This regrettable situation is the result of neglect and could most likely have been avoided by some creative pretending of your tomorrows.

If you are among those who have lost your child-heart, go out today to search for it. I suggest you will find it where you lost it, which most likely will be….

From Entertainment to Inner-Attainment

10/23/2012

From Entertainment to Inner-Attainment

Preparation is needed for every holiday, so use this week to plan how to celebrate Halloween a week from today. This holiday of jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treating was primarily for children until recently when adults began to have parties attired in costumes. It first began as a festival of the dead over 2500 years ago in Ireland when summer officially ended at sunset on October 31st. On this night the Celts believed the souls of those who died that year roamed the land searching for a living person to inhabit for the next year. So Ireland’s early inhabitants disguised themselves as the dead or ghosts to frighten away the roaming souls of the departed.

Halloween survived Christianity’s purge of paganism—thank God—and the Irish immigrants fleeing the great 1840’s potato famine brought with them their Halloween customs to America. Jack-o-lanterns first appeared in the Emerald Isle as large turnips carved with demon faces with a tiny light inside. In the States, failing to find turnips large enough, the Irish used pumpkins in their place.

The tricks-or-treats of this holiday weren’t a Celtic custom but began in 9th century Europe for the second day of November—All Souls Day. On that day people visited homes begging treats of square biscuits called soul cakes. This pious practice soon merged with those of All Hallows Eve and was quickly adopted by actual beggars. They would go begging door-to-door for soul cakes in exchange for the promise of prayers they would say for the deceased of that family. As the number of treats equaled the sum of promised prayers, the typical householder was generous to obtain the release of loved ones from purgatory.

The entertainments of this festival of the dead offer an occasion for the inner-attainment of a communion with our beloved dead. By remembering them with a prayer or by gazing lovingly on their photographs we receive a blessing as we make a mystical pilgrimage to their gravesites. In Islam this blessing by God for visiting shrines and a saint’s tomb is called “Baraka.”

All Hallows, the Feast of “All” Saints, is a celebration of your deceased family and friends who are among the inestimable multitude of saints. As a parent would move heaven and hell to assure their children or lover reside in the bliss of heaven, so God unconditionally gifts everyone with eternal life.

Fear

Fear

Your Appointment

Your Appointment

A Post Halloween Parable

A Post Halloween Parable

Being Busy Strategically

Being Busy Strategically

Safeguard Your Child-Heart

Safeguard Your Child-Heart

From Entertainment to Inner-Attainment

From Entertainment to Inner-Attainment

Edward Hays

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