Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos was celebrated this weekend. It is a Mexican holiday for the remembrance of family, friends, pets, loved ones; those gone who we cannot forget. Beautiful is an understatement of this reverent yet joyous festival, and in Birmingham Alabama the festivities are anchored by an event on the grounds of Sloss Furnaces, the famous blast furnace that operated not too long after the dawn of our great southern city in the aftermath of the Civil War and until 1971. Sloss definitely has ghosts of its own and I did not forget those lost to another time while I was treading that ground yesterday.
Shannon and I took in Saturday’s events under a perfect November sky amongst hundreds of others who couldn’t help but be stopped in the sipping of our cocktails and revelry when coming into the presence of altars honoring the dead. And, something else was there, ominous: The coming storm.
The time before a storm can be calm, serene, reverent, and that is exactly how Saturday felt. As Shannon and I meandered through altars representing long gone musicians, pets, and family members, I found myself remembering those we have lost. Our dear cats, my brother, both Shannon’s and my parents, a best friend, work mates. We people watched, sipping our soda & lime and margaritas in the comfort of the Tito’s Vodka RV enjoying the costumes, commenting on the families; everyone seemed serene yet joyful. I grappled with the multiple temptations of buying a smoked turkey leg.
But the coming storm. Even under that beautiful Alabama sky when the sun leans west near the end of the day, I could feel its tension getting ever close. The storm will hit Tuesday in the United States. Most people reading this lived through the storm of 2000 that lasted nearly a week. We all experience the aftermath of what happened in the storm of 2020, yet it seems wide swaths of people have simply forgotten and wiped it out of their memories even though the scars are in clear view across our culture; they burn through this current campaign.
We all have our methods of preparing for what is coming, already upon us in so many ways. For me, I have been meditating, trying to listen to less news and more music. I have also fought with anxiety, anger and depression. Within it all I have tried to keep an open mind. This hasn’t happened just overnight, but has been taking place in increasing manner for most of this year; a questioning of myself, introspection and challenge, asking continually: “Am I keeping an open mind?”
Open mind does not equate to selling out your beliefs, it requires us to ask that burning question I have already written about once this weekend, and asked myself hundreds of times: “Are you sure about that?” Maybe my truth has some room to grow.
(Please check out Dan Harris’s ‘10% Happier with Dan Harris podcast’ where they go in depth about the origination of this question.) Dan’s co-host DJ Cashmere mentioned Thích Nhất Hạnh’s quote “Are you sure about that?”
The first time I voted was the fall of 1984, the second Reagan election when he took out Walter Mondale to continue his monumental 8-year run as President. I joined new college friends in Nashville, Tennessee as we went down the hill from the Trevecca Nazarene campus, through a neighborhood we called “Black Bottom”* to vote at a local school. I remember clearly seeing people holding signs that suggested they were ‘pro-choice” and yelling at one of them, “Stop killing babies!” It was quite a first voting experience. Although I grew up with no hard and fast affiliation to one or the other major political parties, there really wasn’t a question of who I would vote for in 1984. To this day I stand by it. As unaware, immature, and frankly unknowledgeable and unprepared to vote that day, I stand by it and am proud that I went and punched the ballot. I will not take that moment back or rue it in my soul; for that is where I was and who I was at that time of my life, as were the moments of all the elections throughout my adulthood.
I have grown up quite a bit in these past forty years. I would hope we all have, but as I look for nails to shutter my emotions in the next few days as the winds increase, I am not confident that is the case. We all don’t grow in the same fashion, and our roots do not take the same paths down into the earth.
Back to that question, “Are you sure about that?” My friend Kenny spent many years as a counselor, mainly with D.U.I. and domestic violence clients. He also taught what was called the “John school”. If you got arrested for getting wrangled up with a prostitute, you were going to his class. Kenny and I talked about his work in depth, and to this day I do not know anyone who tackled more difficult issues than he did during the years of his practices. One thing that kept coming up in our conversations was a question he would often pose to clients/students, and may times to ME: “Do you really believe what you are telling yourself is true?” That question changed my life, and began me on a path where I could start opening my mind and challenging hard glued attachments that I had allowed to function and build their ways throughout my fiber.
I have said it before, ad nauseam, that I don’t believe anything I can say will change a person’s vote. However, I can ask myself the hard questions to make sure I am staying on the right path. And, I have asked again and again of myself.
All I would ask to anyone about to punch their vote: Are you sure about that?
As I walked through the altars yesterday at Dia de los Muertos I thought about Kenny. I thought about his words, and they are strong words. I also thought about his son, many years older since Kenny’s passing and molding a personality that will have a strong impact on this world.
I also thought about the living: Family members, some who won’t even talk with me. I thought about our friends who just adopted a beautiful baby girl and all the good they bring to the world with their family. I thought about work mates who believe very differently than myself yet we have to get along and accomplish things. I thought about the people who have said, “She’s just nasty, I can’t support someone that nasty.” (I hope they are asking themselves, “Are you sure about that?”) I’ve thought about the people who help us day to day, whether handymen, yard workers or domestic workers. I’ve thought about those who damn me to hell. One statement from a college mate suggested I would be judged for allowing the murder of millions. (I hope they ask themselves, “Are you sure about that?”) I have thought about my family member who has been discarded by many in their immediate family just because they are living the life they want. I hope those doing the discarding ask themselves, “Are you sure about that?”
We took our final sips of our cocktails as the mariachi band segued to a beautiful Mexican ballet troupe performing on the festival’s main stage. We got up from the grass, on that soil that took the souls of so many people who helped build much of the southeastern U.S. As we made our way through the growing crowd at twilight I turned right to see a lady wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap. I literally felt my stomach ache, angry. I looked up, and asked myself, “Are you sure about that?” And, we went on.
We will go on no matter what happens. There will be an aftermath. I don’t want to discount the storm. We don’t know what will happen, and there is no sense in mourning losses we haven’t experienced. We owe those who have passed on from this world the best we can do, which requires a disownment of hate, a pursuit of betterment, and loosening our attachments to what WE deem to be ‘Truth’. These times require hard questions about who we want to align with for our trips through this world. I do not want to be the hate I hate, and I will vote that way on Tuesday.