Dia de los Muertos

The Day of the Dead...according to Wikipedia, I think, is today.

Honoring my ancestors.  Having beauty around me that can be directly attributable to them.

Thinking of them with some gratitude, and some sorrow, and some musings of memories.

I'm not Mexican, though my mother's family had close leanings from San Antonio.  I think Mexicans were treated much as blacks were in the south...another culture, race, somehow inferior to those white folks who settled on land that had belonged originally to yet a more ancient race of people, the indigenous Americans.

The Celts (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, even Spain and France, all were impacted by them...and I think even Italy)...well the ones who survived to keep any holidays and traditions going, especially in Ireland, had Samhain on the 31st of Oct, and their New Year began yesterday.

I did celebrate that a bit.  I looked up my own personal reading for a new year.  I considered setting personal intentions that embrace the ideas that have been floating about in my head for a while.

Gaia is the earth goddess who has reared her powerful head and spoken to us all.  If we had a shaman in our midst, and were a tribe that depended upon our agriculture, we'd pay a lot of attention. Our political arena makes a lot of effort to display feathers of power like cocks to catch the eye of the goddess' hens.

What is important for me to do this year will have to do with staying closer to the earth, living more in harmony with our ecological needs, having greater awareness, and making more choices that support Gaia's needs, which obviously would also be my own.