One Thousand Butterflies

It is such a release to look into the obscure shadows of death and not avert our eyes. To accept our mortality as a common thread.. that life comes and goes, and we are all bound to that experience - we can accept our humanity and share the emotion together.
We pretend that if we hide from the idea of death, that perhaps it will disappear; we only talk about it in whispers, but I'm tired of keeping my voice down. We're dying! We are ALL dying.

I spent last Wednsday in the company of hundreds of other people - recognizing the sacredness of the living, celebrating the loved ones that have already passed on, and embracing the delicate distance between our world and the next. I watched as thousands of candles flickered around alters.. their warm glow punching holes in the fear and the lonliness of dying. Alters dedicated to friends, fathers, prophets, brothers, mothers.. people who came, and loved, and then transitioned onward. It was like we were holding death and shining a light onto every pore and blemish, until there was nothing left to run from.. we can see it now.
We see these people who have died, and we see ourselves.. and for those who are willing to look, that truth unites us. We're all it together.



Rachel's father died 10 months ago.. and to celebrate his life she folded one thousand oragomi butterflies and hung them from strings. That was her alter.