Welcome to The Wildroot Parables weekly discussions! This is where we can come together as a community and have real talk with one another: open, honest, gracious, and curious.
This is YOUR space to discuss with each other, not just engage with me! Because of this, SAFE SHARING is my highest priority. If you are not engaging safely and with grace with others, you will have to leave. Period.
Thank you for entering this space with care!
On Monday, I shared some of my thoughts about Hallowe’en, along with some liturgies for the day. I spent much of my adult life seriously disliking this unusual holiday, but finding sacredness in it has given me a new love for it I never had, before.
Today, let’s discuss: can you think of a holiday, a life event, or some other part of life—large or small—that you have had to make sacred in order to better understand/enjoy/make peace with it? What changed? How did you determine what “making sacred” meant to you?
Kung fu taught me more about the sacredness of the body through the perfectibility of physical art than the Catholicism of my youth ever did. Despite all the physical beauty and ritual, the underlying message felt something like: soul = good, body = bad. A sort of Trojan Horse Manichaeism!
I’ve had a similar journey with Halloween. Except, even as a small child I hated it. I hated the itchy costumes and candy wasn’t forbidden in our house (not that we ate a ton, it was simply a non-event, so as an introvert I was very confused why I’d want to knock on a stranger’s door, have to converse with them to get something I could get any other day ... in non-itchy clothes 😂). While my parents were fine with Halloween (my dad strongly pro and my mom pretty neutral about it) I attended a Christian school where Halloween was forbidden, if children talked about trick or treating it was only done so in hushed tones so the adults couldn’t hear. The school was of a tradition where the Church calendar was not observed, “All Saints Day is only for Catholics and they aren’t really Christians” was the yearly tale told. As I got older my social circles and interest in herbalism introduced me to how the Wiccans celebrate Samhain ... making my relationship with the holiday even more uncomfortable. In my late 20s and early 30s though, I discovered there’s another side to the holiday. As I became more connected to the natural cycles God placed in Nature, and connected with more and more Church traditions (any denominations can be real Christians! Including Catholics!) I began to see the HOLIday’s holiness. Now in my mid-30s, I still hate modern Halloween - but I’m learning the season itself is not wicked as a whole. It is, in fact, Sacred and I’m eager to see where the Lord takes me in the coming years on this journey.
For me it was All Souls’ Day. As a convert, the notion of purgatory- specific a burning, fiery sort of Purgatory- was almost a deal breaker.
The more I studied about the theology of final sanctification though, the more I longed for my ancestors to have a speedy one, and by extension, all the holy souls. So I began cultivating a deep devotion to all of them, praying as I passed every cemetery (near constant prayer here in New England!), offering sacrifices for them, and creating an ever growing offenda on the family altar each November.
With the increased ritual, I found my fear of fire receding and my gratitude for God’s boundless mercy increasing.
Kung fu taught me more about the sacredness of the body through the perfectibility of physical art than the Catholicism of my youth ever did. Despite all the physical beauty and ritual, the underlying message felt something like: soul = good, body = bad. A sort of Trojan Horse Manichaeism!
I’ve had a similar journey with Halloween. Except, even as a small child I hated it. I hated the itchy costumes and candy wasn’t forbidden in our house (not that we ate a ton, it was simply a non-event, so as an introvert I was very confused why I’d want to knock on a stranger’s door, have to converse with them to get something I could get any other day ... in non-itchy clothes 😂). While my parents were fine with Halloween (my dad strongly pro and my mom pretty neutral about it) I attended a Christian school where Halloween was forbidden, if children talked about trick or treating it was only done so in hushed tones so the adults couldn’t hear. The school was of a tradition where the Church calendar was not observed, “All Saints Day is only for Catholics and they aren’t really Christians” was the yearly tale told. As I got older my social circles and interest in herbalism introduced me to how the Wiccans celebrate Samhain ... making my relationship with the holiday even more uncomfortable. In my late 20s and early 30s though, I discovered there’s another side to the holiday. As I became more connected to the natural cycles God placed in Nature, and connected with more and more Church traditions (any denominations can be real Christians! Including Catholics!) I began to see the HOLIday’s holiness. Now in my mid-30s, I still hate modern Halloween - but I’m learning the season itself is not wicked as a whole. It is, in fact, Sacred and I’m eager to see where the Lord takes me in the coming years on this journey.
For me it was All Souls’ Day. As a convert, the notion of purgatory- specific a burning, fiery sort of Purgatory- was almost a deal breaker.
The more I studied about the theology of final sanctification though, the more I longed for my ancestors to have a speedy one, and by extension, all the holy souls. So I began cultivating a deep devotion to all of them, praying as I passed every cemetery (near constant prayer here in New England!), offering sacrifices for them, and creating an ever growing offenda on the family altar each November.
With the increased ritual, I found my fear of fire receding and my gratitude for God’s boundless mercy increasing.