Threads that bind us
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This morning, I listened to a conversation on Anderson Cooper’s podcast All There Is, in which he and Stephen Colbert spoke with such tenderness about grief. They talked about how few outlets we have in our modern world for mourning, how easily sorrow becomes private and how desperately we want someone to say: “I see you. I understand what this is” so that we don't feel quite so darned lonely in it. They talk about how sharing stories of people who've passed is oxygen; that by becoming their narrator, one is no longer cut off, but opened up. As I listened, I thought of El Día de los Muertos approaching on November 1st: an ancient celebration of death that turns grief into light. Families build ofrendas adorned with candles, marigolds, food and scent. It’s believed that the bright orange marigold (literally, “Mary's gold” ), with its sun-like hue and pungent fragrance, helps to guide souls home. During this extraordinary celebration, the air becomes alive with meaning — photographs are displayed, stories told, memory is made visible, time collapses and, importantly, a communication channel is created. In Bali, where I visited most weekends while living in Singapore, mornings begin with offerings — canang sari — small woven baskets of flowers, rice, incense and oil. Their fragrance rises like prayer, bridging the human and the divine. Each offering appears as a sign of the sacred in the ordinary. Scent becomes connection; the flowers, the incense, the candles all create threads that open us up to something other, something greater. The offerings are tangible anchors for these invisible threads. And while Anderson and Stephen spoke about how lonely grief can be, Stephen also spoke about how he carried his brother’s belt around for forty years, almost without thinking: “The belt was my brother,” he said. I look at my own desk now: letters, a white stone from a Californian shore, a dried ginkgo leaf, a collection of four-leaf clovers my children found, a crystal owl, a child's tooth... Each object holds a story and...a pulse. Each liminal one of them keeps love and connection material. They are my own ofrenda — my own altar, regularly added to without intention, out of my subconscious reverence for the here-and-now and for the people I love. They are portals to moments in time that are special to me. Maybe our rituals — our altars, our scents, our objects — are ways of reaching through the veil to A.N. Other world, where love still moves freely and where we are not alone, yet all the while anchoring us in the beauty of the “now”. Jen Pastiloff spoke about “Beauty Hunting” on an Instagram post this week: she advised to stop and name five things of beauty right now. Not in your life but right this second. Pull the car over and take a proper look at that view. If you can — my advice — take something tangible from it. That beauty, that thread, is the linchpin of our commonality. And naming it, as Jen suggests, is to connect. To connect is to love. And love — felt, seen, or even smelled — is what makes this world, and all others, shimmer. It's what binds us. As May Swenson wrote, in In Love Made Visible: “In love we are set free So this week, make your altar, wherever you are. Call the souls (and yourself) home, create the connection, speak the stories and recognise that, perhaps, they never left you. Olivia x |
BTS
Roots
Body
Long Haul
Mind
