Angels' Day - El dia de los Angelitos
When I was a kid, we celebrated Angels’ day on November first, which meant for me to dress as an Angel, and go from home to home singing “Angels we are, coming from heaven, begging for alms for ourselves”. Neighbors would give us some treats, candies, and sometimes some coins. They would also make us sing over and over the song, and we of course sang it happily as holy kids knowing that the goodies were our rewards. It was a lot of fun. The night before, I was celebrating Halloween dressed as a witch, and the day after I was an Angel. How much fun could that be, two nights in a row expressing two sides of our personalities. The mundane and the holy, both with pagan origins, as the actual first day of All days' Saints can't surely be traced, and observed by the Roman Catholic Church, around the dates of 600 or so.
When I think of these beautiful traditions, celebrated way before anything we have known, I connect to the first moment of being, and what I do know for certain is that our mind, induced by the force of our soul, has pushed us to connect with the invisible, that is the energy that connect us to life and death. Both important as we are part of a duality of forces in both realms. In ancient times people were connected by nature and the forces of it. They celebrated its gifts by respecting nature, and honored the earth with rituals. They also celebrated the dead by remembering them. I could only imagine the first time men gather together to praise, and lift their souls into the infinity.
Today is All days' Saints, honoring all Saints known and unknown. A day of meditation. I pray to them, all of them. As once my grandmother used to do before she went to bed. I would listen to her for about an hour, murmuring names, I would ask her, grandma to whom you are praying? She would say, I am praying to all the angels and saints.... I would say to her , wow you are inviting way too many people into your bed, and it is going to collapse! She laughed and said, mi amor dejame rezar que estoy perdiendo el hilo...
Traditions are beautiful as keep us connected in the time that it is now but that in our mind we process as before. In this still moment, that for me are all holy in the energy of love, I pray for us to become more united. I pray that we respect this beautiful planet, so a thousand years from now, a new generation of humans carry with them what we have been doing for centuries. Love you all Ethel
When I think of these beautiful traditions, celebrated way before anything we have known, I connect to the first moment of being, and what I do know for certain is that our mind, induced by the force of our soul, has pushed us to connect with the invisible, that is the energy that connect us to life and death. Both important as we are part of a duality of forces in both realms. In ancient times people were connected by nature and the forces of it. They celebrated its gifts by respecting nature, and honored the earth with rituals. They also celebrated the dead by remembering them. I could only imagine the first time men gather together to praise, and lift their souls into the infinity.
Today is All days' Saints, honoring all Saints known and unknown. A day of meditation. I pray to them, all of them. As once my grandmother used to do before she went to bed. I would listen to her for about an hour, murmuring names, I would ask her, grandma to whom you are praying? She would say, I am praying to all the angels and saints.... I would say to her , wow you are inviting way too many people into your bed, and it is going to collapse! She laughed and said, mi amor dejame rezar que estoy perdiendo el hilo...
Traditions are beautiful as keep us connected in the time that it is now but that in our mind we process as before. In this still moment, that for me are all holy in the energy of love, I pray for us to become more united. I pray that we respect this beautiful planet, so a thousand years from now, a new generation of humans carry with them what we have been doing for centuries. Love you all Ethel