As If it Were the Last

Yom Kippur was last week, and I found it trickier to integrate into my Pagan practice. While Rosh Hashanah has several lovely rituals that felt easy to respectfully adapt, Yom Kippur is literally 25 hours of fasting and asking God to put away the smitey stick for another year, which jars with my beliefs about sin and the sacred. Also, the Yom Kippur machzor is approximately 20 billion pages long and includes stuff like the men thanking God that they aren’t women. So I took a while to find my bearings with this holiest of Jewish holy days.

I remembered something Rabbi Anne Brener says in her incredible book Mourning and Mitzvah and dug out my copy. It took me a minute to find the quote, but it was well worth the search. Rabbi Brener writes:

On Yom Kippur, traditional Jews wear a kittel, the white garment in which they will one day be buried. They recite the Viddui, a prayer of confession similar to the one recited by a dying person during the last moments before death. During the period preceding Yom Kippur, Jews are expected to put things right between themselves and others, as if there would be no other opportunity for such repentance.

See, the idea is that during the Days of Awe, God records every living person’s fate for the year to come and then seals that fate on Yom Kippur. And while some say that sincere repentance on Yom Kippur might sway God to change your fate, others argue (it’s Judaism, folks; theological debate is pretty much the name of the game) that All Decisions Are Final, and that the reason to atone on Yom Kippur is that, if you’re fated to die in the coming year, you want to face that fate with as clear a conscience as possible. As I read Rabbi Brener’s words, my observance took a shape: how would I live if I knew this was my last year of life?

I also shifted the focus of my observances to allow self-compassion. I wanted most to acknowledge the harms I’ve caused myself, the Earth, and other living beings, made what amends are possible, and figure out how to do better from now on, rather than just keep focusing on what a terrible person I was for having messed up in the first place. This clashes somewhat with the traditional mood of Yom Kippur, but my therapist was proud. 😀

Tuesday evening I cast my circle and performed a very pared-down version of the evening service, tweaked to align with my naturalistic beliefs (all my Psalms, for instance, came from the incomparable Earth Psalms by Angela Magara [Z”L]). I wore as much white as I own (I don’t have a kittel, but making one is for sure on my to-do list now) and a fringed shawl that, while nothing like a tallis, fulfilled a similar role in keeping me focused on my obligations. I started Wednesday morning with a shortened version of the morning service and read the book of Jonah as instructed (anyone else think it has the weirdest ending?). Wednesday evening I undertook a short meditation where Spouse and I sat in a sterile medical office while a doctor told me that I had Madeupenitus and had, with or without treatment, exactly one year to live.

Then I opened a spreadsheet on my phone. Not the most sacred act, I know, but in no time flat I had 30+ items under “things I would do if I had a year to live.” Once the spreadsheet was filled in, I went outside to complete the (once again, highly abridged) Neilah, the service that closes the Yom Kippur observances, and to open my circle.

No, I didn’t fast; I didn’t feel right taking the day off from work, and I knew better than to try to put in a full workday while fasting. Maybe some year. We’ll see.

On Thursday, when I had more time and a bigger screen, I opened my spreadsheet and split the items in it into two columns: Do and Hold. That is, I want to do some of these things now, prognosis or no prognosis, while others will wait until that (heh) deadline is staring me in the face. Some people would say that if I would do something immediately if I knew I were dying, I should do it immediately now, but that isn’t always practical or desirable. For instance, if I knew today that I absolutely only had a year to live, I would buy a plot in one of our local green burial grounds. But I won’t do it without the prognosis, because I hope to live long enough that one of my preferred options – conservation burial or natural organic reduction (human composting) – has become legal and viable in my state. Don’t worry – my Do list has plenty to keep me busy in the year to come, whether I kick off before next Yom Kippur or not.

And there you have it: all the Yom Kippur that’s fit to print. While the actual ritual is still very much a work in progress, I feel confident saying that I will observe this holiday again in the years to come. Assuming my name’s in the Book of Life.

_{Image description: a brown shofar on a marble surface. Photo by slgckgc via flickr}

Samhain 2020: Wholeness

As a Pagan in Minnesota, one of the first lessons I learned—and continue to relearn—is how to adapt rituals on the fly, especially those planned for outside. Spending an hour toasting the Ancestors in the cemetery where Leora’s grandmother is buried seemed like a great idea as I planned these rituals in August when it was humid and in the upper 80s (F). It seemed like a crummy idea when the actual day arrived with a predicted high of 31 (0 C) and a windchill of 24 (-4 C).

We adapted. We set up a small altar in our living room and settled on the couch. We drank apple cider mulled with cinnamon, cardamom, and orange peel and traded memories of our beloved dead, beginning with the most recent (Kiara Madison-Cook. What is remembered, lives) and then meandering generally backward to our hazy earliest losses. We shared the memories however they came and let ourselves remember the difficult times as well as the good. Although we missed being at Nanny’s grave, this felt intimate and moving in a way that standing more formally in the cemetery might not have.

Once we’d said everything we needed to, we sang the marvelous “Bone by Bone” to honor and remember all the lives and deaths that have shaped us, spoken and unspoken, known and unknown. We wrote a few words or drew symbols representing characteristics of our beloved dead that we want to embody more in the months ahead. One of the most profound ways the dead live on is through us; if we admire something about the way they lived their lives, why not endeavor to bring that quality into our own lives? Those papers will sit on our main altar until at least Imbolc, to remind us of the work we’re carrying forward.

We bundled up and made our way to the back yard. We each cut a lock of hair and and buried it, speaking the words of the Earth-Dweller’s Creed:

To Earth all life returns;
From Earth all life rises up.

We don’t believe in a personal afterlife, but we believe—we know—that when we die, the Earth will take our bodies back and make new forms from them. It is a promise we all receive, and one we make in return (and the main reason I’m so adamant about green burial). It is the most sacred rebirth I can imagine. We give a bit back now, to remind ourselves of the greater return to come.

And that was the end of the ritual proper.

We’re revisiting our Equinox list to make sure we’re making progress on preparing for Winter. And I’ll be revising one of my end-of-life planning documents, in the spirit of the season (Leora gets a pass this year, because grad school). I like my rituals to have after-work.

So why “wholeness”? Why is that the value I chose to associate with a holiday so often focused on death, grief, and loss? Precisely because of that focus. I’m a deathworker. I’ve seen far too many times the impacts of rampant overcultural death denial and truncated and disenfranchised grief on our lives and communities, especially those of us of marginalized identities. To be whole, I believe we must accept all aspects of life, even its end. We don’t have to like it, but we do have to acknowledge and accept it. The more we show up for death, the more we can show up in life.

A Prayer Upon Learning of a Death

In September, I helped a friend build a toolkit to prepare for the death of a family member that they wouldn’t be able to be physically present for. That toolkit included a prayer to offer upon first learning of the death. In this time when so many of us will experience that same physically isolated loss, I thought it might be helpful to others, and my friend graciously agreed to let me share it.

In a time when we are barred from many of the conventional rituals of death, spontaneity and organic growth of ritual can be the best way to go – individualized rituals of the heart that truly reflect who your beloved was and who you are. But I find that in that moment when you first hear that someone close to you has died, a shocked numbness often descends. You know you want to do something, but your brain can’t quite get together the what. Having a set prayer or action you can call on every time helps your voice and body keep moving while your brain catches up. If your religion or culture doesn’t have something like this, I humbly invite you to use these words.

[NAME], I honor the body that you were
The words you spoke
The passions that moved you
The love you shared
The life you lived.

These were not always easy to live
Or to live with
But they were always you,
And I honor you in that wholeness.

I grieve that you are no longer a living presence in my life
I regret that I could not be with you at the end
I allow myself to hurt and to heal
Whatever form that takes
However long it takes

Whole and holy Earth, take back the body of [NAME] that was formed from you
Make new forms and lives from it
May a piece of [NAME]’s life infuse the new lives that grow from it. 
May the passing forms of this life and the tears of our grief sustain the web of your creation.

Blessed be

Finding My Path(s), Again and Again

Just over a year ago, I was in Olathe, Kansas, for the Midwest Dramatists’ Center fall conference. It was a terrific weekend full of cool people, useful learning, and a lot of great theater. I came home fired up about kicking my theater career in the butt. This website exists in large part because of that conference, and my reflections on it formed my first blog post here. I am ever grateful for the experience.

Then, something incredible happened: my smart, talented, dedicated spouse was accepted into grad school. Suddenly, something we’d discussed for years as a hypothetical became imminent.

After a great deal of discussion, I committed to being the anchor for our household while Leora completes their MSW. The “stable one.” But I was equally determined that “stable” would not equal “stagnant.” So, as is my witchy way, I went on a lot of trance journeys, read a lot of tarot spreads, and made a lot of lists in sacred space to determine what I wanted to be doing with myself for the next two years.

I was quite startled when the answer that came back, time after time after time, was deathwork, not theater.

And so was born the deathication, a twoish-year-long exploration of my desires and options around “how to make a living at dying without killing what I live for.” It will involve everything from industry research and interviews with professionals to meditation, tarot spreads, and liturgical development. If everything goes according to plan, or at least doesn’t blow up too spectacularly, I’ll come through it with a solid understanding of where I fit in the alternative deathcare world.

I’m not turning my back on playwriting forever. If nothing else, I have six more plays to write in the Wheel of the Year cycle, because I want to know what else happens to these chuckleheads. I’ll probably never stop writing plays and attempting, at least desultorily, to get them onto stages. But when I think about the amount of time, energy, and perseverance required to really make it in either of these fields, deathwork is the one where I most feel willing—nay, eager to make that commitment.

So last weekend, I was in Chaska, Minnesota, for the National Home Funeral Alliance biennial national conference. It wasn’t perfect: the alternative deathcare movement as a whole struggles around issues of accessibility and diversity, and this conference was definitely a microcosm of those struggles. I loved every wonderful, challenging, frustrating, enriching minute of it. Even when I was pissed off, I was so engaged. I’m so fired up to keep having the vital, difficult conversations and do the vital, difficult work of making it better. That’s how I know my love is real.

Several Minnesota Threshold Network members attended the National Home Funeral Alliance biennial national conference in Chaska, MN, where we hosted a mock vigil, complete with cardboard coffin for attendees to decorate

Colleen

From the deck-in-progress The Resilient Tarot by Leora Effinger-Weintraub.

Colleen Cook, May 26, 1968 – July 8, 2019
A dear member of my Pagan and queer communities. Their dance with cancer was long and complex, and they danced it as fiercely as they could until the very end.
Requiescat in punk.