Día de los Muertos

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Religious Education for children and youth happens during worship on Sundays. Children and youth arrive in the Sanctuary for the just a little bit and welcome in Sunday with a story and song. Then, they attend their own programs in the Education building. Learn more here!

If you don’t have a chalice, but want to light one, check out our Making a Chalice at Home page.

In person services are followed by coffee hour.

Children’s Story

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This morning we commemorate the Days of the Dead, All Souls/All Saints, Day. Who are you remembering today? How is your heart?  Is there someone in particular you are missing today? For all who have experienced recent losses, know that you are not alone with your grief. For all who have experienced a profound loss, no matter how long ago, we are here for you, You are not alone. 

Death: It is said that the very word burns the lips; and yet in some cultures people dance with it, make fun of it, and swallow it whole in the shape of a sugar skull… Ritual helps to hold us together when we fall apart, when we feel that the grief is so deep that we can’t imagine a tomorrow or even the next breath… From the Byzantine chants of the Greek Orthodox Funeral Sacraments focusing of the Resurrection, to Buddhist rituals of Samsara, crossing over, practicing breathing into your own death, to the colorful celebration of the Days of the Dead in Mexico and the more somber rituals in other countries of Latin America, rituals are designed to open us up to another reality; Mourning Rituals in community motivate us to reflect not only on our relationship to the departed, but also place us at the crossroads where we contemplate our own mortality; Rituals are designed to make meaning of death, of loss, of the thief that steals from us the spark of life, the simple joys, the companion, our reference point to that which we know is true and solid and is now gone…

In Latin America, as part of the Spanish colonization, Christian missionaries tried to eradicate indigenous practices dealing with death and the ancestors.  Some of those practices became part of the Catholic calendar and merged with All Souls Day. In some Latin American countries All Souls Day takes on a very somber tone and the rituals are dictated by the priest during a special mass. In other Latin American countries, rituals are a mixture of indigenous and Christian traditions. Yet the legacy of Pre-Hispanic religious rituals of making offerings to the ancestors still today come alive in the tradition of altar making. The rituals mark a special time in the calendar where the living reestablish their relationship and interdependence with the ancestors and the divine. This special time and the rituals that accompany these days offer us an opportunity to reflect on the uncertainty and fragility of life, on the people who are no longer on this earth, and on the role that this society plays in making certain people more vulnerable and accelerating their untimely departure from this life. 

These rituals, whether pagan, Christian, indigenous, or of our own imagination and creativity, give us a chance to open up, to connect, to share our sorrows with our community. Grieving communally is just as important as healing communally. 

At this point you might be thinking:  But what do these rituals have to do with us? We’re Unitarian Universalists! Most of us are humanists and atheists. We don’t dwell on the mystery of death and we don’t talk much if at all about an afterlife. I would say yes AND we are more diverse than we might assume. 

I have been building community altars for many decades. Growing up in Chile, I inherited the gift of altar building from my grandmother Rosario.  For years, my altars were private home altars until the AIDS pandemic. I was working at the Latino Health Institute in Boston and there was a time when every week we experienced the deaths of our clients and friends. Many families were so ashamed and afraid that they would not allow themselves to grieve or to have a ritual to honor the memory of their family members. Many of the funerals were religious rituals that denied the identity, gender, sexual orientation, and cause of death.  Many people died without any funeral rites and partners and friends were left grieving, devastated, disconnected, and alone. So I approached my coworkers and together we created community altars to honor the community members and offer their friends and families an opportunity to gather to pray, to sing, to say the names out loud, to light candles, contemplate the photographs, and to feel connected. We did this for many years and invited other community organizations to join us. Decades later, when I entered seminary at Harvard Divinity School to become an ordained Unitarian Universalist Minister, I was invited to build a community altar. The first person who came by was a staff person who identified as UU. At first, she was very quiet, but after a while she asked about the meaning of the altars. As it happened, I was building an altar for the little angels. For infants and children and also for mothers who had experienced miscarriages. She was visibly moved and proceeded to tell me that she had suffered two miscarriages and never felt that she could share her feelings about that loss. In what she called her Yankee stoic upbringing, the thing to do was to put it behind and carry on. Even friends would offer such platitudes as “But you’re so young you can try again” She asked if we could light a candle and if she could name her babies. We did. And after each name we said Presente! Meaning that they were present in spirit and in her heart. This is her testimonial in her own words: “I am 46 years old and I have had two miscarriages. I want to talk about it. Even with my New England Yankee stoic ways telling me to Just suck it up!…I always carry it. I am a different person now. The first time I went to see the altar it blew me away I anticipated going to a funeral muted colors and sounds I felt as though my experience was black and white and I walked into a profusion of color, it brought back life. I went thinking polite, quiet sharing, maybe a little like group therapy thing then I saw the flowers, the different textures, food, smells, multi-sensory, so unexpected so celebratory it was an astonishing thing! There was a special place for the babies, their own place rituals just for them. I went there thinking mainly about my parents. I felt very safe when I went around saying presente! I said it for the babies I will never know…it felt liberating and connecting to know that there is this vehicle in our community to encourage you to bring your sorrows and your love there. It’s an offering. It gave me another chance.”

That experience and the song The Little Angel inspired me to write my senior thesis about funeral rites for children in Chile and Puerto Rico, where I was living then.

What began in seminary as a tiny little altar, has become a gift that I offer every community I become a part of. A community event that offers us another opportunity to connect and support each other. This special time and space and these rituals that we get to share in community are invitations to reflect, to connect, to make meaning together. It is a gift to be in a community where we can experience our faith as transformational, healing, and stretching beyond borders, to reach the broken heart and to be a source of hope. If you ask me what’s the point?  Why spend time and energy on these displays? I will not go into complicated theological statements but simply say that embodied community rituals connect us and remind us that we are not alone. 

When things fall apart, rituals help us to put the pieces back together again.  With the help of family and friends, music, animal companions, we gather strength, new perspectives, new ways of coping, and begin to feel that we can breathe and face a new day. 

Community is born of life and death, as we celebrate the joys and mourn the losses together. The celebration of the Days of the Dead is about community. Unitarian Universalism is about community. This is what I have learned so far about being a Unitarian Universalist:

We do not preach about individual salvation. We need one another to save this broken hurting world. We need one another to heal and find purpose and meaning in our days. We need the love and support of the community to grow and nourish our souls.

We Remember Them. Presente!