ancestors
we received strength from honouring our dead
we received strength from honouring our dead
Acknowledging the ancestors might sound morose and weird to some people, but for us it was accompanied with lots of singing and noise-makers and water flying in all directions, good smells and an atmosphere of celebration grounded in the pain of separation and loss AND the acknowledgement that the “circle of Life remains”, as the song says. There’s nothing like hearing little children drumming and chanting, “those who have gone before us, rise UP and call their names!”
“i call upon the ancestors, those beings of colour-filled resistance and resilience, those who allow us to live brilliantly and defiantly even in the face of those who would drain the colour from our lives and make us disappear with the stroke of a “delete” button.”
Why Thanxgrieving?
Thanxgrieving became an important time for invoking presence of ancestors who had died in the preceding year, ancestors fallen in the harshest years of the HIV pandemic at that time.
in Roman Catholic tradition, november was already a month for praying for the dead. as good residents of la Alta California, we followed the Mexican traditions of el Dia de los Muertos: by the time we got to the Thanxgrieving celebrations, our memorial tables-altars were already dressed, the orange marigolds in vases, the copal smoke wafting, the white candles in glass whose light reflected on the frames of fotos of the ancestors, new and old; the ritual foods on the ancestors’ table, this table like the table of Prophet Ibrahim Halilullah, there to feed all, the peoples of all worlds.
TRANS-gressing:
of beards, borders, and too-many-things
We are challenged to resist this erasure of the body, for we know that our bodies have always blurred the public/private split, have always blurred the boundaries of personal/political. When your body is on the line, you know that you are transgressing the public/private split in your flesh, by your very existence. When you can be arrested/detained because of looking 'Muslim' or looking like a "terrorist"