An Ancestor Walk
My dad loved dressing up for Halloween…
I reflected on this, celebrating his birthday by stitching patches onto several of his button down shirts.
It’s October, and the veils are thin. His family bible is propped on the mantle with marigolds. I’m packing costumes of my own. for Alchemy. The leaves are crisp, and the Enrichment Labyrinth is brown with pine straw. All around me are signals of cycles.
One of the first events organized at ‘Awapuhi Labyrinth will be an ancestor walk, organized by our new local caretaker, Keli. By carrying a pohaku, a lava rock, and a cut bromeliad, participants will be invited to lay them in a gap in the labyrinth’s field.
This is enough for the prehistoric plants to take root, symbolizing the link between our ancestors and the life that flows forward.
Lava holds the paradox for me of its molten flowing origin and an often sharp or weathered exterior. A paradox of being both commonplace in the islands and also extremely sacred.
From my earliest years, lava represented a paradox of fire and water. Three large picture windows sat atop a low lava rock wall along the back of my house growing up. I knew the rock came from a volcano’s heat, and yet, the rocks themselves were porous. When heavy rains lashed the palm trees in a backyard sloping down to the house, they flowed straight through the rock, soaking the thick green shag carpet.
My earliest memories are of the rug, its long tufted fringe like so many bromeliads. I can see my nearest ancestors—my parents, my mother’s parents, my father’s mother—against this green and basalt background. I can breathe into these memories and resonate with Keli’s planned walk.
No disrespect intended to the ‘aina or the aumakua. Please use stones already in place on the labyrinth’s site or another offering that you have collected in full ceremony with permission. In Hawaiian culture, stones are imbued with spirit. Please respect them and their place! Other ho’okupu are welcome and appropriate.
This month’s Circle invitation is to find the picture that your ancestors would put on the fridge of you. Imagine your ancestors are proud of you.
What are they proud of and why?
This opened up an intense conversation around our dining room table. What would that image be? Doug and I talked about our love. About the space that has created in our lives, about the becoming of our better selves and the lives those better selves touch in return.
He reminded me of this photo of us on orange chairs before a wedding in Manhattan, celebrating love, dressed in costumes of finery. And then he called up another photo of us at a burn, all LED and sparkles. Both were nights of celebration and laughter, friendship and dancing.
Doug toasted me, cheering the almost-packed truck the night before before beginning my Alchemy labyrinth installation: “Can you imagine that 24 hours from now, you might be ready for your first walkabout?” I’m feeling fairly well-prepared, grounded and loose, grateful.
This led me to pull up my labyrinth for the emotion of gratitude, the golden iris in the dawning light, and a shot of me drawing in the sand: May my ancestors be proud of the way I create larger-than-life art that invites others to engage with their own perceptions and emotions.
May my ancestors be proud of the way I create from grounded confidence, which is what I get from the last photo. My movements are sure and sustainable, my limbs loose and long.
In Atlanta, we have a Halloween tradition of letting the neighborhood trick-or-treaters run the Enrichment Labyrinth to get their treat bags, and this year will be no different.
We’ve often continued to sit around a small yard firepit to watch the lights come on and hold space for the transition time from October 30th to the first of November.
This year, I’ll take whatever costume I find myself in and walk the labyrinth for my ancestors and see if I can feel their pride in me.