Mexico’s Día de los Muertos celebration – the Day of the Dead — is a mash-up of pre-Hispanic religious rites and Christian feasts. It takes place today and tomorrow—All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on the Catholic calendar— in the time of the Mexican fall maize harvest. Day of the Dead festivities unfold over these two days in an explosion of colour and life-affirming joy. Sure, the theme is death, but the point is to demonstrate love and respect for deceased family members.
I wonder, as Latin America flows north and gets met by soldiers and border walls at the Mexico/USA border, whether or not we are beginning to see the cultural influence of the Day of the Dead even as far north as Canada. Halloween is not what it used to be; who knows what it will become? An explosion of colour and life-affirming joy?
We left our sign on Main St. protesting the cancellation of the basic income pilot project up for almost two and a half months. The reason was to remind ourselves that this decision affects a lot of people, every day, and not just during the news cycle in which it was featured prominently. In the meantime the provincial government has gone on to other things worthy of a protest sign. We are not going to allow ourselves to be exhausted by such outrages. A new sign has gone up, one that I hope helps us keep balance and offer balance to those caught in the current political tempests.
See you Sunday ~
Rev Ian