Altar
Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead from the Mexican traditions, is believed to be the day when the membrane between the Living world and Dead world is the thinnest.
On this day 2024, I, along with a team of community members, built and tended the altars for the Festival of Altars at Potrero del Sol Park in San Francisco. I built two altars for the San Francisco Dharma Collective. The standing table altar is a five-element mandala altar. The floor altar serves as a space for people to gather and sit in silence.
Table Altar
The Center Altar is symbolized by Buddha and roses. It is devoted to our Buddha Nature, Essence Love, self-love, love in relationship to the other, community, and the universe.
The East Altar represents the element of air, symbolizing motion, breath, and lightness, and is adorned with sage and bird feathers. It is dedicated to our ancestral children.
The West Altar honors the element of water, paying tribute to adults. I used shells, seagrass, and seaweed that are prepared by community members when they set out to the bay and ocean for swim. These treasures from the water are placed to represent rhythms of life, emotions, tides, and moon cycles.
The North Altar honors the Earth. Food and fruits, including baked goods and fruits, are brought to this altar. This altar invites wisdom from the past, present, and future, drawing on the earth and our beloved Ancestors.
The South Alter summons the element of fire, devoted to our ancestral youth. Pillar candles are placed here to symbolize strength, art, poetry, and passion.
The rim of the mandala is created with salt, which in many healing rituals, symbolizes purification.
All are welcome to write messages and prayers for the beloved ones who have passed away, and to bring pictures or objects of the deceased to the altar.
Floor Altar
Marigold, sunflowers, and roses support this piece of landscape. Here, Smoke rituals are offered for cleansing. When the sun set and cushions were brought out here, people gathered and sat in silence.
Grief rituals
There is a good deal of evidence that supports our need to work with the difficult emotions of grief, which inevitably find its way into our lives. Through meaningful rituals, a community of friends, some time in benevolent solitude, and effective practices that help us expand into our fuller selves, we are offered the opportunity to cultivate a living relationship with loss.
May we all recover a faith that recognizes that grief is not here to take us hostage, but instead to reshape us in some fundamental way, to help us become our mature selves, capable of living in the creative tension between grief and gratitude.
