Artist unknown
Last night, I dreamt that someone wove their way through a sea of people at a party to hand me a landline telephone. “Hello?” I asked. My grandmother was on the other end of the line. I knew it was her, even though my repeated “Hello?”s were met mostly with silence. Eventually, she tentatively murmured, “Hello?” back. Without the exchange of anything but those two words, I knew she knew it was me.
My grandmother died over 18 years ago. Although I’m sure I have, I can’t recall a specific time before this morning that I’ve dreamt about her.
I sit in my living room, watching the early morning sun cast its rose gold glow over the westernmost hills of Berkeley, thinking about those I have known and loved who have died. Grandma, Grandpa, Nana. Nick, who much of my world and heart revolved around during the latter half of college. Donna and Em, who brought lightness to my days after moving to the Bay. I think of my friend from high school and her husband, who—our age—died unexpectedly this year.
Today is Halloween. Samhain. The pagan festival of communing with and celebrating the dead. The day in the cycle of each year where the veil between worlds is thought to be most thin, to allow us to send and receive messages, connect with the spirits who have passed from this world onto the next. Evaporated in form but existent, still, as energy. Because, as shown in the Law of Conservation of Energy in physics, energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Only transformed.
I placed my mug of coffee down on the table. Instinctively began to gather candles of varying shapes and sizes and set them in a circle. Placed elemental totems inside the ring. A quartz crystal for air, third eye, highest consciousness, connection to the ethers. A sprig of fennel, now brittle and dried, that I picked years ago from an edge where the land meets the Bay. A dolphin ring I bought with my grandma at a truck stop restaurant halfway between LA and Arizona, once upon a time. An ornate metal koi fish that belonged to my Nana, its history and stories unknown to me, but of her nevertheless.
I lit the candles. Stared at the flames. And breathed.
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Worship is an intense word. Steeped in religious connotations, evoking a level of extreme devotion that I think many of us are not accustomed to extending to anything these days. But this morning, because I’m off work on PTO and had the gift of time, because they say the veil is thin and even though I don’t know that to be true with any certainty I sure as hell don’t know with certainty that it isn’t true, I made a circle out of flames. To pause. To direct my attention. To remember. To mourn. To call in. To celebrate. To worship.
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Earlier this year, while frustratedly spinning my wheels over the phone to a friend about a situation that did not deserve a modicum of the energy and attention I was giving it, my friend politely yet firmly interjected. She asked me, point blank: “What do you worship?”
I sat, in silence, stunned.
It’s a disarming question.
It’s a disarming question. And a vital one.
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Many traditions of meditation talk about attention as our most precious commodity. I tend to agree with this thesis.
Where we direct our attention in each moment of each day—whether consciously or unconsciously; with intent or through habit—dictates how we spend our energy; what thoughts we radiate within ourselves and communicate to the world; and how we spend our time. The cumulative sum of our moment by moment attention determines what we grow in ourselves and the world through the simple yet impossibly complex act of living.
I am sitting in an airport. Over the phone, thousands of miles between us, Missy asks me this arresting question. What do you worship? I pause. Think about my answer. My values. What I effort to connect with, to create. To find reverie in. To actively devote my attention, the sum of the moments of my life.
Words emerged. Integrity. Vulnerability. Connection with nature. Community. Empowerment. Art. Love.
And then, a follow-up question. The moment of truth: Are you living in alignment with these devotions? Am I directing my attention and, by extension, my energies in ways that live into and live out these things?
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Living an embodied existence is messy. Challenging. Impossibly complex. Some days we do better than others; this is true for each and every one of us. When we aim to live our lives honoring vulnerability, justice, nature, inclusion, art, listening, equanimity, beauty and love, friction often occurs because we don’t live in silos, separate from each other or from society at large. We are brought up and live within a system that worships its own set of deities.
Money. Power. Individualism. Whiteness. Masculinity. Heterosexuality. Competition. Dominance.
And so.
Worshipping love is an act of resistance. Worshipping quiet. Worshipping introspection. Worshipping the earth. Self-connection. Diverse voices. Collectivism. These are all active violators to the gods that are laid before us here, now, in 21st century America. Gods of power, of money, of personal gain at the expense of others and the earth. Gods of erasure and forward motion rather than reverie for the traditions and wisdom of our ancestors, of the past. Gods of separation over unification. Gods of greed and excess. Gods of the material over the spiritual. Satiation and worth found through what we can afford and acquire, not what we cultivate and offer that comes from within.
Shifting these devotions is an act of resistance. It shapes our culture. Shapes your life. Shapes collective consciousness.
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And so, today, as the veil may or may not be thin, with time on my side I chose to devote my attention to honoring those who have touched my life and are no longer palpably in it. Who have moved on to their next iteration of existence, whatever that may be.
Cultures and people the world over are worshipping their ancestors today. The love, experiences and wisdom they shared. Living out their gifts and memories as best they are able. Worshipping connection, worshipping ancestry, worshipping love.
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It is so easy to sleepwalk through life. To succumb to the pervasive distractions, insatiable desires, pressures as invisible as air yet heavy as tar. To give into our internalizations of the values imposed upon us by our contemporary culture, by the world at large.
With so many cards stacked against us, so many conveniences urging us to be passive receptors instead of active creators of our lives, I invite you to ask yourself: What do you worship? What do you devote your attention to? Are the two in alignment? What shifts can you make to live more fully into the values you genuinely want to embody, want to fill your life, want to light up the world?
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Sending love to you all, then and now, here and in the ethers. May we choose to actively worship that which brings healing and growth, love and joy to us all.