Don't call us protesters, say the young people​ standing against corporate extraction practices on the Missouri River in North Dakota. We are Protectors.

Unlike the secular political demonstrations I've participated in over the last 30 years, their call is spiritual. Their way of gathering to protect the earth and the water, ceremonial.

"Everybody standing here today is here because someone in your family, one of your ancestors, prayed that you would be here," we were told at a large solidarity event outside the US Army Corps of Engineers today in Portland.

While the Protectors' stance in North Dakota is slowly beginning to attract public attention, it is far from the only front in defense of what was once considered by all peoples, an animate world, a world in which we are all related, human and non-human, seen and unseen.

And it is only the most visible form of prayer for water. In honor of all those whose see their prayers as necessary for the well-being of the world, I'm sharing a recent article from the Washington Post about a 13-day ritual in which dozens of women and girls walk the entire length of the Potomac: "They will speak to the water, sing to the water, and pray for the water."  

"The walkers recite the phrase I will do it for the water in Ojibwe as they hand the water to one another," the article reports.

Organizer Sharon Day, 65, of St. Paul, Minnesota, is asked "if the walkers’ goal is to raise awareness about water pollution. Sure, awareness is nice, she responds — but that’s a paltry goal. The intent of this walk is to speak to the water’s spirit, not to a human audience.

"'All the while, we’re speaking to that water. We’re telling the water how much we care about her,' Day said. 'We really do support the work of other environmental groups. We believe what’s missing from most of this work is the idea that the water has a spirit, and we as spiritual people need to speak to that spirit.'"

..."She doesn’t view her walks as a form of protest. A child of the ’60s, she protested plenty — against the Vietnam War, in favor of civil rights and feminists and lesbians and American Indians. 'I spent my entire life protesting — until I carried that water,' she said. 'It’s not a protest. It’s a movement toward something with love. You’re doing it because you love these rivers.'"

The article also quotes Beth Brent, who planned to participate for a week and ended up walking for two months. "'It’s a prayer. Something about being in prayer every day, it’s powerful.' ...Brent, too, has worked with water cleanup organizations, and found something in the walking that was missing there. 'They keep it in the realm of science and water monitoring. That’s a very colonizing, Western white male way of engaging with nature,' she said, noting that Ojibwe tradition allows only women to carry the water on these walks, with men in supporting roles."

Day was asked, “Auntie, do you really think this is doing any good?” As the article recounts, "The child doubted that the women’s walk could prevent further degradation of the environment. 'The mining companies, they’re so strong. They have so much money,' the girl said.

"Day responded: 'But the water’s more powerful. The water’s more powerful and that’s who we’re speaking to.'"

Read the full article and get involved with #NODAPL Solidarity.

The Spring Equinox offers an experience of coming full-circle, of the life that is fed by death, new growth emerging from the fallow times. 

I spent the first part of the first day of Spring at Portland Nursery, leading a discussion on springtime rituals and making a spray that would grace my father-in-law's grave when we buried him later in the week.

​I went from the nursery to Forest Park where I led a ceremony honoring a baby who had died before her birth. 

On Friday we gathered to mourn and celebrate my spouse's father Dean, a deeply decent man. That night, we gathered with our larger circle to mourn and celebrate our much-missed friend Marcy on the anniversary of her birth. 

Then, a few days of retreat in a sacred place in the Columbia River Gorge. We were sent with prayer flags sewn at a kitchen table by women whose hands followed the stitching of untold generations of women before them. We released the flags into the mists of a wind-gnarled oak grove, returning the next day to find them perfectly framing a view of a freshly snow-laden Mt Hood.

What rituals of remembrance do you employ? ​

This month on the Death Talk Project blog, I'm starting to share stories from my archive. You can find them all on this site, of course, but here's a sample of just three, on the theme of "ashes to ashes".

I live in a temperate rain forest where trees and shrubs bloom seemingly year round. Our January sidewalks are dusted with cherry blossom petals instead of snow. In place of curtains, our windows are shaded by bough upon bough of camellia flowers.

It wasn't always so. I grew up in New England where it was winter until it was spring. Some of my favorite childhood memories relate to the rituals practiced by my mother to coax spring into our home.

She brought branches of forsythia and pussy willow indoors to force their blooms weeks ahead of their outdoor schedule. We pricked the ends of eggs with a pin, blowing the contents out into a bowl, then dying the shells. A drop of melted wax affixed a thread to the decorated eggs which she then hung from the blooming branches.

There was Easter sunrise service, up on East Rock, then home for hot cross buns and a treasure hunt for the Easter baskets my mother had hidden. 

These days I mark the change of the seasons by heading to Portland Nursery to lead a class where we reflect on the personal, familial, and cultural traditions that tether us to the turning of the great wheel of life. This weekend we'll forage from the garden grounds to gather bits to tuck into a spring altar swag.

As we admire each other's creations, we'll offer this simple blessing for the vernal equinox: May the seeds of your intentions be well tended. 

"I’ve always thought that tradition is to the community what memory is to the individual. And if you lose your memory, you wake up in the morning, you don’t know where you are, who you are, what ground you're standing on. And if you lose your tradition, it’s the same thing."
​~ John O'Donohue

What do a she-wolf, a sacred cave, a goat, and the mating season of birds have to do with a holiday now associated with roses, chocolates, and frilly red hearts?

I grew up in a household skeptical of Hallmark holidays and the kind of forced sentimentality that's often a greater expression of commercial consumerism than any deeply inherited meaning. 

But Hallmark is only one in the long line of forces that has channeled ancient rites and rituals into modern mores. The Christian Church grafted its holidays onto any number of pagan celebrations in an effort to coopt the rhythms of nature-based rites that had created meaning and strengthened communities for countless centuries. 

Lupercalia, for instance: a sacred festival held in the middle of February to connect Romans to their origin story and to Faunus, their god of forest and fields. You could hardly get more nature-based than Rome's founders, Romulus and Remus, who were suckled as infants by a she-wolf, a lupa. An order of priests called the Luperci would gather at the cave thought to be the site of this early day-care center. According to History.com:

These short, dark days can be difficult, especially when they come soaked in relentless sheets of rain as they have here in Portland this December.

There's no better reminder that we're tethered to the wheel of life: the longest night, followed by the return of the sun, the larger order we are part of, a cycle of change and renewal.

As Phillip Moffitt writes, "There is no new dawn without the night; their seeming separateness disguises a unity that reflects the unity of life, an unfathomable dance of opposites. This paradox is the very essence of what it is to be alive—joy and pain, sickness and health, light and dark, wonder and fear." 

This year, as last, I'm celebrating the winter solstice with a three-part invocation built off Moffat's words:

• In honor of all the dark times within us and all who now suffer in pain, with sickness, in fear.
• In honor of the light within each of us, our capacity to feel, anticipate, and generate joy, health, and wonder.
• In honor of our great teacher, Mother Nature, who shows us how to hold it all, joy and pain, sickness and health, light and dark, wonder and fear, in one continuous cycle of being.​

I offered this twice yesterday: first in a class I led on Winter Rituals at Portland Nursery, then at a Death Cafe I hosted at our grand Central Library. At the Nursery we shared stories of winter traditions from our families and explored a bit of the old world origins of the holiday customs that persist today in their commercialized and Christianized guises. After we'd each decorated a candle wreath we admired each other's creations and blessed each other with this simple chant:

May the dark days of winter nourish you well. May the light of your candle illuminate your connection to the great wheel of life. 

This morning I slept through the dawning of the shortest day of the year; I slept as long as I needed. I rose and lit the candle in the center of my solstice wreath, the candles on my mantle, the colored bulbs on my Christmas tree. I'm savoring the cozy home I'm so fortunate to have as 50 mph winds tumble the world outside my windows.

In honor of the great wheel of life and all we remember during these dark days, some images from the Holten Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, where each Christmas Eve 300 school children light candles and place them on each grave at dusk. The graveyard holds the bones and the stories of 1,394 servicemen who died in the final days of WWII as Canadian troops advanced into northern Germany.

As the cemetery web site says of this annual candle-lighting ceremony: "It is hoped that the youth will learn this lesson; war must be prevented, freedom is not to be taken for granted and every effort must be made to maintain peace and democracy. 

"It is difficult for children who have not experienced war to understand what it means for their country to be occupied, what it is to live in terror or the horror of a concentration camp. The soldiers who are buried in Holten gave their lives for our freedom, that we can now live peacefully in a democratic society. By telling and retelling the story, we pay respect to those who gave their lives and hope that the children (the responsible adults of the next generation) will keep the light of freedom burning."

Peace be with you all, in darkness and in light. 

"Aunt Holly?" Josie said as I picked her up from chess club the day before Thanksgiving. "I love spending time with you!" 

Josie launched right into the plans she'd made for our playdate: gratitude books. She would show me a special technique for making a book without staples or stitching, and then over Thanksgiving we'd pass them around and everyone would write what they were thankful for on the book's blank pages. I explained that I'd be out of town for the holidays with friends but she assured me it would be alright - we'd each have a book for our own Thanksgiving location.

Our book-making project experienced a few delays. First, the organic frozen yoghurt shop for some pumpkin pie fro-yo (I've convinced myself that because it's organic, it has no calories). Then a crisis to be tended to - Josie's turkey centerpiece lost a few of its feathers. But then we settled into instructional time, Josie leading me step by step through the magical construction of a book bound by a few clever folds and cuts.

"I'm feeling complicated," a Facebook friend posted recently. When it comes to my birthday, I know how she feels.

No matter how incredibly blessed I am in my life on so many levels, there are always some "It's my party, I can cry if I want to" moments when the calendar turns to 12/12. The echoes of the past pound loudly in my ears: my first birthday, spent in an isolation unit of an Army hospital in Germany; my 12th, the day of my parents' divorce; four years ago, the two trips to the ER with a ruptured disc in my neck.

This year the traumas of birthdays past were met by fears of the future. I had marked the entrance to my fifties two years ago with a ceremony in which I asked "for the courage and the grace to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of my own unfolding."

I am loving, for the most part, where the current is taking me. I just hate what it's doing to my skin.

In my mail box this last week arrived the latest issue of my college alumni magazine featuring a truly lovely profile of my current work, with an equally lovely full-page, nearly life-size photographic portrait - the first photo I've seen in which I look my age: neck wattled, eyelids droopy, skin coarse. (Believe me, the digital version glosses over what's revealed on the heavy matte page.)

I feel humiliated by my vanity; humbled by my unexpected age-phobia. I know how extremely fortunate I am to enjoy good health and vitality as so many around me suffer severe physical afflictions; to be in a loving partnership of 18 years while so many live lonely; to have such meaningful work in my life, and to be so recognized and appreciated for that work.

But "Facing the End" remains complicated. I may talk about it every day. But that doesn't mean I don't recoil to a deeply fearful place when I contemplate my mother's death, or Amber's, or Marcy's. Or look with confusion and aversion on the impact of time and gravity on my skin.

And so, on my birthday, I honored the complicated parts with some tears, in the sturdy embrace of my beloved. And I celebrated the many blessings of my life with a succession of sweet moments of connection, culminating with a raucous performance of an epic birthday play written, acted, and produced by Ava (11), Bennett (newly 8); Josie (7 for two more months), and Jules (nearly 3).

Later, as Amber and I sat by our fireplace for a wind-down round of Bananagrams, I realized the complications had washed away. I felt bathed in love and gratitude.

Last week I had the extraordinary experience of being sung to as I lay nestled in a recliner surrounded closely by eight members of Portland's Threshold Choir.

"What do you need?" they had asked me as I settled into the chair in the center of their circle. I told them I had just completed four ceremonies and a speaking engagement in the last five days and was heading off to the east coast to lead the memorial service for a good college friend. 

They knew just the songs - in fact, they asked if they could sing me two. No hesitation on my part - Yes, please! 

I shut my eyes and let their voices envelope me. Their gorgeous, strong harmonies sung to me of peace, of knowing at the end of the day that what is done is done, and what is not done is not. I had a strong physical sensation of releasing myself down into a hot epsom salt bath. And of being swaddled, wrapped snuggly in a blanket of tender consolation. I arose replenished. The verb I used as I shared the experience with others was nourished. I felt well fed, well cared for.

I've had the privilege of collaborating with the Threshold Choir on two ceremonies: one, to mark an upcoming birth; one, to honor a life that had just passed. They describe themselves as "women who sing for people crossing life's thresholds: birth, death, sickness, struggle, change, and celebration." 

Invited by Angela Keinholz to participate in Departing Decisions' first annual Party of Thanksgiving, choir members offered to sing to the caregivers and community servants in attendance - not as a performance, but as a presence inviting us to be fully present. As prelude to the simple ceremony of thanksgiving I designed and led for the event, the choir sung us into attention with a gathering song. They led us and held us as a group with several more songs, asking us not to applaud them as entertainers but to join them with our ears, our voices, our open hearts. 

After the rest of our candle lighting ceremony in which we gave thanks for the families we serve in dying and death, all who serve these families, and veterans and other first responders (the gathering coincided with Veterans Day), choir members adjourned to a corner of the room where they offered a personal song bath to those who felt called to receive their gift. 

"Singing with and for each other in this way — accompanying each other through the passage-places in life with presence and song — is an ancient art, a centuries-old tradition with which we’ve largely lost contact, in our modern Western society," says the Portland Choir's Kri Schlafer. "Through Threshold Choir service, we reconnect ourselves to this deep practice. We take in the presence-connection of it as singers, and offer this nourishment to others."

When I told Kri how I'd been affected, she said, "I love that the word nourish came to you. It comes to me like that, too. Since getting involved in the Threshold Choir, I have experienced how, when we give and receive song in this way, the song is its own food group — its own nutrition stream." Another cause for thanks giving.

Sarah’s dying time came in late summer of 2012. She had endured 5 years of cancer treatment for Leukemia. These treatments never brought a cure but they gave her time. She embraced this time with an ever-widening heart that brought a fullness of living that was a gift to live alongside. Her willingness to live deeply and honestly within her experience of suffering gave her more life, not less. Intimacy with what is gave way to the many moments of brilliancy that touched everyone close to her. Living life through the lens of its end reveals a truer sense of preciousness than anything else I have experienced.

Sarah and I had many conversations about death in those five years. They were never easy conversations. There were times when we fell to the ground in sorrow knowing we would likely have to say our goodbyes. Meeting this sorrow together in the open offered a kind of tenderness and love that was so alive and remains powerfully with me now. This intimacy with death allowed us to treasure the simple moments that life offers. Morning tea time on the couch by the woodstove often felt like a feast. The sweetness of time, the warmth of tea and fire and the chance to honor together a new day were gifts and we knew it. Living for a time in this knowing illumines life as the gift it is.

When our goodbye time came in late summer two years ago we savored each moment and made sure to take our time with it. We acknowledged together our last time going to the movies with our kids. Our final outing together was a visit to the green cemetery where Sarah would be buried. We wandered the fields together and she told me she wanted to be buried in the open part of the field because she loved the open. We took time there to sit and read Mary Oliver poems together and choose two that would be read at her memorial service. This slow and deliberate goodbye dance broke my heart wide open. In so doing, it offered me a way to hold all that was to come. 

To love what will not last is food for the soul because it is how it is. Everything I see from my chair here by my garden tells me this is how it is. Next year’s sunflowers will not be the same ones that are here now. The soil of life needs the dying in order to continue nourishing life. The sorrowing heart needs the mysterious force of grief to keep itself alive. We live in a culture that tells us otherwise. That tells us to deny death and skip as quickly as possible over grief. Sarah’s dying time was a gift just as her life was to all who knew her. I thank her every day for teaching me how big love can be and how precious this human life is.

Happy Chinese New Year, everybody! 

Every moment contains within it an ending and new beginning - it's no wonder humankind has come up with such a delightful array of ways to mark our cycles. 

Some consider the fall, with its eternal imprint of "back to school," their spiritual new year. For others, January 1 implies a fresh start and the resolve of renewed commitments. Many treat their birthday as that pivot point marking the completion of another trip around the sun. And for the billions of people on the planet who relate to the Chinese lunar calendar, yesterday kicked off a two-week long welcome to the Year of the Yang Wood Horse.

Chinese traditions hold a special place in my chosen family. The father of one of my best friends emigrated from China as a boy. Over the years I enjoyed many a large banquet over which he presided. He seemed to have no greater happiness in life than to see his extended family gathered at large round tables with lazy susan centerpieces delivering dish after heaping dish of delicacies to each guest's waiting soup spoon and chopsticks.

The best of all these feasts were the ones that welcomed his grandchildren into the world. Instead of a baby shower or christening, my friend opted to create a Red Egg & Ginger party to celebrate the births of her daughter and son (my godchildren). We followed tradition, waiting one month after each birth. (In times of high infant mortality, surviving to the one-month mark was cause for celebration; these days, it provides a sensible recuperative interval before entertaining.) Gong Gong (grandpa) flew in to oversee the ordering of the feast and other duties of a proud patriarch. Besides the food and toasts and the red-dyed eggs, symbolizing happiness and the renewal of life, these parties marked the bestowal of each child's Chinese name.

My godchildren's Gong Gong is now in the Spirit World, but he remains at the center of the household's comings and goings, memorialized on the ancestor's shrine in the family dining room. There, alongside a bottle of whiskey, sticks of incense, and red paper envelopes from auspicious occasions, the children place drawings and miniature bees wax sculptures that connect them to their Chinese ancestry.

Bonus Features!
Read what my favorite Western astrologer, Emily Trinkhaus, has to say about the transition from Snake to Horse. Here's an article Emily recommends on the specific meaning of the Yang Wood Horse. 

And below, my niece Josie embraces the coming of the Year of the Horse with her first riding lesson.