[First posted in October 2010 on www.deepeningcommunity.ca]

The ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain was observed October 31 to November 1. It was seen as the dividing line between harvest season and winter, signaling the northern hemisphere’s movement into the “darker half” of the year.

Samhain festivals usually included a large bonfire in the town square. Typically, every family arrived with a hollowed-out pumpkin, or turnip, or gourd, which they used at the end of the festivities to carry a burning ember home to light their hearth fires. Through the cold, dark winter, they clung to the memory of the communal bonfire, which warmed both hearths and hearts. Some Halloween historians trace the origin of the jack-o-lantern to this tradition. Continue reading →

[First posted in November 2012 on www.deepeningcommunity.ca]

October 25th was Onion Day. You probably didn’t know that. It’s an annual tradition that was invented by my friend Lucy in 1998, when she was eight years old. Lucy and her family had just received the news that her mother, Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann, was suffering from an aggressive and deadly brain cancer. Young Lucy decided that, amid all the sadness and fear, they had to have something to celebrate.

Two months before Jeanie died on New Year’s Eve of 2005, I was in their Detroit home for her last Onion Day. Lucy, her older sister Lydia, her dad Bill, Jeanie, and I sat expectantly around the dining room table for the annual ritual, knowing that the winner would be the person who came closest to guessing the number of layers in the onion we passed around—and that the one left holding the last piece of onion was obligated to make everyone else laugh. An average onion contains 20 to 25 layers—well attested by copious data collected from seven years of Onion Day celebrations to that point.

Her daughters encouraged Jeanie to guess first. Though the exact numbers have slipped my mind, I remember that it went something like this. Jeanie guessed that the onion had three layers. Lydia smiled sweetly at her mom and guessed that the onion had 274 layers. Lucy went next, guessing 526. We continued around the table, with Bill’s guess coming in at 832 and mine at about 1,287. Then we passed the onion around, each peeling away a layer—22 in all—until we were all weeping and laughing at the same time. Jeanie—the winner by far—was triumphant on her last Onion Day. Continue reading →

[First posted in November 2011 on www.deepeningcommunity.ca]

Free Spirit was wrenched away from his mother, sister, and Algonquin community when he was four years old. At the residential school where he was taken, a nun gave him a new pair of shoes, which he immediately plunged into a sink filled with water. The beating he received came as a shock. His people always soaked their new moccasins and chewed on them to soften the leather.

Free Spirit is among thousands of survivors of Indian residential schools, who were forced as children from their homes by government decree and church complicity across Canada and the United States. This tragic and misguided effort at assimilation lasted almost two centuries, and its legacy lived on in ruptured families and broken lives. Thankfully, Canada has begun the difficult process of hearing the truth and moving toward healing. Continue reading →

[First posted in September 2011 on www.deepeningcommunity.ca]

I had to serpentine my way around a row of massive concrete barricades yesterday morning to get to the prison that houses Georgia’s death row. Four days before, on September 21, this line of defense was upstaged by an army of prison guards, sheriff’s deputies, state troopers, and riot police wearing blackened face shields and bearing high-powered rifles. A helicopter hovered overhead, and throughout the evening, police cruisers roared past the crowd, their lights flashing and sirens blaring. In all my years, I’d never seen such a massive display of force.

Just before 7 p.m., the scheduled hour of Troy Davis’s execution, the three hundred or so of us who had come to protest and pray outside the prison knelt and went silent. A bell rang the hour, and someone close to me began singing “Amazing Grace.” And then, at the other end of the line, a great cheer went up. A reprieve! Hope. It turned out to be only temporary.

Troy Davis was pronounced dead at 11:08 p.m. His last act on this earth was to ask for mercy for those who killed him. Moments later, the heavens opened up with a downpour of rain, a great, cosmic weeping for this gentle soul and a cleansing for all of us who are in need of showers of mercy. Continue reading →

[First posted in September 2013 on www.deepeningcommunity.ca]

Lately I’ve become increasingly annoyed by what I call “fake community.” I’ll try to explain.

Yesterday I marked another year of life on the planet. I received email birthday wishes from my dentist, a local seafood restaurant, and Bob, the guy who sold me a car two and a half years ago.

Now, my dentist is a very nice man and I’m grateful for him. But I see him every six months for about ten minutes, eight of which I have my mouth gaping wide open—which is hardly conducive to conversation. As for the seafood restaurant, I went with a friend about a year ago, and it will probably be another year before I can afford to go again.

Bob followed up his email message with a phone call, letting me know that he’s just sitting around his dealership waiting for me to buy another car. What he doesn’t seem to grasp (though I’ve told him more than once) is that my last car lasted thirteen years and 265,372 miles—and I’m expecting at least as much from this one. Continue reading →