The Magic, Miracles and Joy of an Artist: Dia de los Muertos

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Dia de los Muertos

Dia de los Muertos

November 1st and 2nd

The time has come to celebrate Dia de los Muertos (day of the dead). It is time to celebrate our loved ones who have gone before us, to celebrate the afterlife, to honor those we love by remembering them with joy and celebration.

Take time to be still tonight, and listen. The wind you hear might be a loved one returning to visit.

In Mexico, there will be many celebrations, with parades, altars set up in homes, decorated cemeteries, marigolds, special foods to eat, candy calaveras (skeletons & skulls), calacas (skeletons), music, and dancing. It is believed that the spirit of the dead return to visit.

My thoughts today turn to family I've lost in the past two years:

Brother Patrick

Uncle Steve

Uncle Andy

Mother-in-law Jean

Sister-in-law Joan

Other relatives and friends have passed in prior years. I will take a little time to think about each of them and how they touched my life.

I had planned to make a shrine, a sugar skull, or paint a Day of the Dead painting. Alas, with those ideas still in my head, Dia de los Muertos has arrived. I must start working on those ideas soon so I can be prepared for next year.

1 comment:

OmaLindasOldeBaggsandStuftShirts said...: I too had great ideas and little or no follow through. I didn't even get my ofrenda out of the garage. Well tonight, photos, stories and remembering. In this case it is the thoughts that count. Happy remembering and celebrating the lives of those you love. Oma Linda; November 1, 2012 at 5:56 PM

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come!

I AM A "SEARCHER"

"I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know - unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.

For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves."

~ James Kavanaugh

I am THE LOVERS Tarot Card

Motive, power, and action, arising from Inspiration and Impulse. THE LOVERS represents intuition and inspiration. Very often a choice needs to be made. Originally, this card was just called LOVE. And that's acually more apt than "LOVERS." Love follows in this sequence of growth and maturity. And, coming after the Emperor, who is about control, it is a radical change in perspective. LOVE is a force that makes you choose and decide for reasons you often can't understand; it makes you surrender control to a higher power. And that is what this card is all about. Finding something or someone who is so much a part of yourself, so perfectly attuned to you and you to them, that you cannot, dare not resist. This card indicates that you have or will come across a person, a career, challenge, or thing that you will fall in love with. You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path. No matter the difficulties, without it you will never be complete.