In September’s newsletter I alluded to writing about Haiti and the Haitian community in this newsletter. November is always potent with its first day, the Day of the Dead, following Samhain and ending around a celebration of harvest, however flawed the story of Thanksgiving is. My intention then was to share some of the beauty of Haiti’s rich ceremonial traditions because November is one of our most important celebrations of the crossroads of life and death, a bountiful place for Spirit. It also is a time of strong powers, embracing the fertile void of living and dying. And it’s the month I was born in mid-stream between Day of the Dead and Thanksgiving.
This November the US held an election, and the potency of this month has changed significantly. I wish I was surprised at the election outcome. I anticipated these results, as outrageous as it is that someone who says horrible and blatantly racist things about Haiti and other communities of Color and Culture (and so many others) would become president. I have been thinking about power a lot since the elections. Power seems to be an obsession of many in the US right now.
With power comes responsibility. When I was in high school, in the Vietnam War era, I often mused at the cliques and the variance in power that existed between the more and less popular cliques that defined my high school. I recall one day in the hallway between classes, witnessing an act of unkindness and meanness by a “powerful” student towards a student who was less popular and often bullied, and thinking: The more power we have, the more responsibility we have. This is WRONG. We are responsible for the effects and impacts and ripples of our power. This seemed so obvious to me, and I have never forgotten that moment because I intervened. In the wake of this month’s elections, I am aware of how dangerous intervening in abuses of power will become.
November 1 is the Day of the Dead in many places, including where I live in New Mexico. It is known as Fet Gede in Haiti. The Gede Spirits are the Spirits that embrace the edge of life and death and all the ways dark and light interface. They are powerful. They use their power to protect children, especially those called to the Mystery too young and too soon. They laugh at human folly, reminding us to play, and to engage with levity in our seriousness and our responsibility because we are all co-journeying to the same destination: the Unknown. Celebrating Fet Gede, we celebrate the balance of power each of us is. Each life is a meeting place of power and powerlessness moving towards an ultimate outcome we cannot control. The ceremonies for Gede are powerful and beautiful, and always culminate in a feast that provides nourishment to our entire community. No matter how little material wealth anyone has, the community has the power and the responsibility to offer food to everyone who shows up.
That Haiti, Haitians and Haitian traditions are often maligned in service of power and dominance is repugnant. The reverence for the interconnectedness of all life, for both the mundane and the mystical, and all the ways they intersect to offer us strength and power in our time here offers a level of respect and care that we could benefit from cultivating and living now. Aspects of Vodou remind me of Buddhism. I appreciate the understanding that the divine resides within us and that is what offers us power to participate with life in ways that both acknowledge and ease suffering for all – not create it. With Thanksgiving approaching, a day that is named for a meal that allegedly celebrated the beginnings of shared abundance between the Indigenous people of this land and the colonizers, imbalance of power once again shows its shadow side. My terms for this day interchangeably are Gratitude Day, to offer respect to those who have stewarded the land for at least 30,000 years, and Genocide Day, to acknowledge the blatant destruction of Indigenous ways of living and being. This way of being is a respectful reciprocity and balance of power that is lost in the hypocrisy of the myth some people still believe. My Indigenous teachers and Ancestors teach me about the essential place humans have in the world of all life. With our immense power we are here to protect the balance of the natural world, to celebrate her power and to steward those who we can easily overpower. It is not a life of dominance and extraction; it is a life of cooperation and care.
I don’t go to church, and I pray all the time. A favorite Haitian proverb says that we dance to know God, that our church can be our body, and that worship is an active expression of empowerment through our active embodiment of Spirit, God, Creator. In other words, we worship when our actions benefit others. On the heels of this election, may this Gratitude Day be one that heralds an awakening of all that we have to care for and steward in the US, in our global community, and in the vast expanse of nature that created us. May we show up empowered and may we move and act responsibly.