Space on the Ofrenda—Murfin Verse for Días de los Muertos

Note—Even amid the Coronavirus pandemic with its soaring death toll and sturm und drang of the election, the drumbeat of Blacks murdered by police continues.  Those of us in McHenry County take note of the near-by Waukegan killing of Marcellis Stinnette and the wounding of his girlfriend Tafara Williams.  It brings to mind a Días de los Muertos service four years ago at my church.

That Sunday we, as was then our custom, we observed Días de los Muertos—Days of the Dead—at Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry, Illinois.  We began more than a decade earlier in our old church building in Woodstock primarily as a way to honor and connect with McHenry County’s large Mexican and Mexican American community with which we were deeply engaged in social justice work.  Elaborate care was taken to explain the cultural and religious roots of the observance, describe the customs, and create our own ofrenda—the altar to the dead.  To complete the experience, members and friends were invited to add photos and memorabilia of their own dearly departed to the altar and share a comment or memory.

Over the years as we became used to it, less time was spent each year connecting the holiday to its roots.  After all, we knew the story by now, didn’t we?  Despite the traditional Mexican decorations—the sugar skulls, papel picado cut-out tissue banners, votive and other candles, and marigold blooms—more and more the services concentrated on honoring the memories of our own dead—a kind of therapeutic and cathartic sharing that brought tears to our eyes and perhaps a faint glimpse of mortality.

The ofendra at the Tree of Life UU Congregation.

Many Unitarian Universalist congregations have adopted similar annual observances.  We have discussed before the controversies and challenges of cultural appropriation or a sincere yearning to learn and grow through wide varieties of spiritual practice.  We will leave that aside in the present case.

I had planned to bring a photo of my father that year, but it was a groggy Sunday morning for me after sacrificing sleep to watch my beloved Cubs lose a World Series Game and then working my usual overnight shift at the gas station/convenience store down the road.  I was half way to McHenry before I realized that I left my picture beside my computer in the study.   Oh well, I thought.  This year I will just sit back and listen.

And so I did.  As usual the photos, trinkets, and momentous to lay on the ofrenda were accompanied by touching, wistful, tragic, and even funny memories.  But as the parade to the altar continued my mind drifted to those unmemorialized—those beyond our immediate circles and family.  Perhaps it was because that year, thankfully, I had no new loss of my own to process.  I mentally peered over the horizon.

Almost without realizing it, I found myself moving to the pulpit.  As if another voice was speaking through my body, I said something like this, laid single marigold blossom, and retreated in surprised silence to my seat.

Later, at home, I tried to form what I said into a poem. 

 

Space on the Ofrenda for the Dead Who Didn’t Matter

November 1, 2016

 

What can I lay upon the ofrenda

            for the Day of the Dead        

            when I do not know a favorite food,

            have a fond story to tell,

            memory to share,

            faded photo in a tarnished frame,

            when I have already

            forgotten the name?

 

Not someone I should care about,

            no kin or clansman,

            no old romance or childhood pal

            no skin off our noses

            alive or dead,

            strangers to the party for the dead

            on our altar and shrine.

 

No one, after all, who really mattered

            We are assured           

            if a stray thought wanders

            off the reservation      

            and feels a moment of

            undeserved connection.

 

That guy, the fat father, car broken down

            on a nice White road,

            a real bad dude

            to a cop in a helicopter.

 

Or the other one reading in his own car

            in his own parking lot,

            some kind of disabled head case,

            drilled as his wife screamed

            “He doesn’t have a gun.”

 

Or that Native American girl

            in her own apartment with her           

            four year old child,

            sad and suicidal

            and obliged in an instant.

 

None of them mattered,

            no concern of mine, yours or anyone,

            all deserving to die

            at righteous, blameless hands

            for being Black or Brown

            and a fill-in-the blank threat.

 

I have already forgotten their names,

            if they had one,

            and there will be others

            to temporarily take their places.

 

Why crowd our gay ofrenda

            for the likes of them?

 

Well, if I really must,

            just one marigold

            over there behind

            Auntie’s teapot

            and grandpa’s airplane bottle

            of Jack Daniels.

 

And keep quiet about it.

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

 

Día de Los Muertos, the Ofrenda, and Murfin Verse

Gaily hand painted skulls on sale in a Mexican shop for la Dia De Los Muertos.

Note—Another popular re-run with bonus Murfin Verse.

Despite sharing some key common imagery—skulls and skeletons—and some cultural and religious DNA, Día de los Muertos, the two day festival from Mexico, is not just a Latino Halloween.  The two observations reflect two entirely different views of death—one reflecting terror and horror and the other welcoming acceptance.  That’s the shorthand for it anyway.  In reality it is, of course, more complicated.  The Mexican holiday owes its unique vitality to the merging and mutual corruption of two cultures so alien to each other that at first the seemed totally incompatible.

The Aztecs were the new kids on the block.  Just the most recent in a chain of high civilizations that had risen and fallen in Mesoamerica over a period of 4,000 years—the Olmec, Maya, and Toltec to name a few.  There were serious ethnic, cultural, and religious differences between these groups, but archeological evidence shows that they shared a view of the afterlife—a cyclical pattern of life and death that was continuous and in which the spirits of the dead were a protective presence to the living and under the right circumstances the living and they could communicate.  Death was not seen as something grim, but as a natural step in continuing existence. 

This belief manifested itself in many ways, including some that to European eyes seemed barbaric and brutal beyond imagination, especially the mass human sacrifices as practiced by the Aztec.  But, at least theoretically, those sacrificed were expected to undergo the knife in a state of religious ecstasy as they transitioned to the next life for the good of their people.  Of course in practice, the Aztecs often used hundreds of their captured enemies for the rituals and they may not have been so sanguine to their fates.

Mictecacihuatl, Queen of the Aztec Underworld, eater of the dead.

But beyond the sacrifices, these beliefs meant that ordinary people could commune, even celebrate, with their lost loved ones.  The Aztecs expressed it in a month long festival honoring the goddess Mictecacihuatl, Queen of the Underworld, or Lady of the Dead. During the festival they first honored los angelitos, the deceased children and then those who passed away as adults. The Mictecacihuatl festival was held during the late summer period of the corn harvests, a natural time of bounty and celebration.

Enter the Spanish, their soldiers and priests who conquered the mighty Aztec—with the significant assistance of other civilized vassal peoples who were tired of giving up their corn and sacrifants to the mighty rulers of Tenochtitlan—who had very different ideas.  The first order of the day, going hand-in-hand in making the conquered people slaves, was destroying all vestiges of the old religion and imposing Catholicism on them.  After all, saving the souls of the savages whether they liked it or not was a central mission of the Conquest.

The Church, of course, had a lot of experience in this sort of thing.  Hundreds of years earlier it had encountered, squelched, and absorbed the pagan Celtic and Germanic peoples.  The Church had learned to adapt local customs that could not be obliterated and cloak them as Christian traditions by turning old gods into venerated saints.

The transformation of the popular Celtic festival of Samhain, for instance, had been transformed into All Saints and All Souls Days.  Similarly in Mexico they re-purposed the Mictecacihuatl festival and squeezed it down from a month to the same two days coinciding with the end of the European harvest season on November 1 and 2. 

Indio peons were expected to attend Masses to honor their dead—a least those who had died good Catholics.  And this the people dutifully did.  Indeed at first they had no choice, but eventually they internalized the changes and accepted them. While the people accepted the Masses, they brought their own interpretations to them, and they continued to hold onto folk traditions that stretched back to Pre-Columbian times.  

A home ofrenda with images of the Dead and gifts of things they enjoyed in life.

Over generations those traditions blossomed into Día de los Muertos as we know it today—spilled out of the churches and into homes where ofrendas, welcoming altars to the dead, are gaily decorated with skeletons, skulls, Flor de Muerto—orange marigolds, candles, religious icons, photos and memorabilia of the dead and groan with gifts of sweets, favorite foods, and alcohol.  These altars welcome the spirits of the visiting dead.

Then in many places families return the favor by visiting the cemeteries and picnicking on the graves of loved ones.  In some areas of Northern Mexico the family might camp out there from the evening of All Saints Day, November 1.  There are many regional variations involving parades and special celebrations in the homes where someone has died within the year which are opened to all visitors who are fed with homemade tamales and other treats.

19th Century Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada and his creation Catrina in a 1981 linocut poster by my old friend and IWW Fellow Worker Carlos Cortez for the Movemento Artistico Chicano (MARCH.)

The frequent use of skeletons and skulls is meant as a reminder that we are all mortal and will someday join the dead.  The popular 19th Century artist José Guadalupe Posada who depicted calacas—skeletons—cavorting gaily is credited with popularizing that sort of imagery which is continually re-interpreted by folk and fine artists. Particularly popular is the image of Catrina, the lanky, skeletal female figure bedecked in sumptuous clothing and giant ornate hats, who serves as a reminder that death is a fate that even the rich can’t avoid.  Catrina is also seen as an embodiment of old Aztec goddess Mictecacihuatl. Other countries of Latin heritage have significant All Saints and All Souls celebrations, but outside of Mexico and adjacent countries with significant Mexican populations or cultural influence, none celebrate Día de los Muertos in this unique way.

The United States, with a large and growing population of Mexican descent or origin, is one place where the festival is widely celebrated, particularly in the Southwest and border regions.  But with large population moving north into the old industrial cities of the Midwest and northeast and into rural and small town communities, the custom has spread, adapting to new circumstances. 

Anglo children are introduced to the Festival, stripped of religious significance, as part of their cultural awareness curriculum now in many schools.  Street festivals featuring revelers painted to look like skeletons are popular in cities like San Francisco and draw many non-Mexicans.

The spirituality of Día de los Muertos and its unique view of death and the relationships between the living and the dead appeals to many in this country looking for new religious experiences.  Many non-Catholic churches now have Day of the Dead services or host family gatherings.  It is commonly observed in many Unitarian Universalist congregations which strive to navigate he tricky ground between respect and cultural misappropriation.  My church, the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry, Illinois had regular Day of the Dead services for well over a decade.

Last year at the Tree of Life UU Congregation in McHenry, in lieu of bring a photo and tokens to some deceased family member, I extemporized a riff inspired by the seemingly never ending executions of Black and Brown people by trigger happy authorities.  Later, when I got home, I organized my rambling babble into this poem.

The Ofrenda at the Tree of Life U.U. Congregation.

Space on the Ofrenda for the Dead Who Didn’t Matter

November 1, 2016

What can I lay upon the ofrenda

            for the Day of the Dead         

            when I do not know a favorite food,

            have a fond story to tell,

            memory to share,

            faded photo in a tarnished frame,

            when I have already

            forgotten the name?

Not someone I should care about,

            no kin or clansman,

            no old romance or childhood pal

            no skin off my nose

            alive or dead,

            strangers to the party for the dead

            on our altar and shrine.

No one, after all, who really mattered,

            I am assured,  

            if a stray thought wanders

            off the reservation     

            and feels a moment of

            undeserved connection.

That guy, the fat father, car broken down

            on a nice White road,

            a real bad dude

            to a cop in a helicopter.

Or the other one reading in his own car

            in his own parking lot,

            some kind of disabled head case,

            drilled as his wife screamed

            “He doesn’t have a gun.”

Or that Native American girl

            in her own apartment with her          

            four year old child,

            sad and suicidal

            and obliged in an instant.

None of them mattered,

            no concern of mine, yours or anyone,

            all deserving to die

            at righteous, blameless hands

            for being Black or Brown

            and a fill-in-the blank threat.

I have already forgotten their names,

            if they had one,

            next week you will forget

            and there will be others

            to temporarily take their places.

Why crowd our gay ofrenda

            for the likes of them?

Well, if I really must,

            just one marigold

            over there behind

            Auntie’s teapot

            and grandpa’s airplane bottle

            of Jack Daniels.

And keep quiet about it.

—Patrick Murfin