What did you do for Halloween?
It slipped past us, but I did learn a fascinating
fact about it recently: The first of November is “All Saints Day,” also called “Hallowed
Days.” The eve before all Saints day is Hallows eve. Viola’ Halloween. Okay, you may have known that already, but
what I found fascinating was that the pagans believed that the veil between
this world and the next was the thinnest at that juncture between the eve of
October 31, and morning of November 1. People dressed hideously to scare off
any unwanted spirits that might have crept through that veil.
And we dress
up in scary costumes to this day…Halloween provides excellent inspiration however.
I have an aversion to masks—carried over from when I
was a child. Does anyone else feel that way? I don’t even like clowns, and
horrors, when I was a kid, Santa Claus wore a mask complete with a fake beard. I
knew though, that that wasn’t the real Santa Claus, and the idea of sitting on
fake Santa’s lap was abhorrent to me. Luckily I never had to do it.
You could say I had a trauma. I always think it’s
odd when someone says, I was scared by something as a child and now I am afraid
of that something,” but with me and masks I wonder. Perhaps it was the scare I
had at two or three years of age that did it. I ran to greet my father as he
came home from the grocery store, and stopped short, screaming. He was wearing
a mask! A cereal box came with a mask attached, and with the best of
intentions, my dad thought it would be funny to come home wearing it. It wasn’t.
One more tidbit before I close. A philosopher named
Ernest Holmes called prayer “A Treatment.” This comes, like Halloween, from way
back. Way back, physicians, that is doctors, were not the skilled scientists we
have today. (And I have a feeling that Star Trek’s doctor Bone’s comment will
prove correct. “It’s barbaric,”he said when he saw our present-day treatments.)
When did doctors learn about germs and to wash their hands for heaven’s sake? Late
1800’s I believe. So, a person in need of healing had two choices—they could
choose a doctor or a metaphysician (Medicine man, medicine Woman?) for treatment.
Holmes applied the term “Treatment,” as well for
prayers. He did not believe one ought to
beg or plead for their desired results.. For while “God “ is “Out there,” He is
also “in here,” meaning “Within.” Therefore, prayer is to prepare oneself. It
is to allow oneself to me in a mood of receptivity. It is a “Treatment.”
