So for Samhain my partner and I had a dinner party. It started with “we should have some people over” and ended with the moving of furniture and the building of a trestle table in the living room while I translated the menu into my poor French. Things have a way of growing in my house — all but my houseplants.
We had a “dumb” course (potage de pomme de terre) and then we passed a cup and poured a bit of our drinks into it and remembered a person important to us. Even though relatively few of us were pagan, we all kind of got into it and I at least found it moving. Many of us spoke of old teachers (that’s what happens when the host goes first, and the host is a professor). It was really wonderful to hear how people who have passed live in, in a real and physical sense, among the living.
I haven’t been to a circle or thysia in — oh my, almost a decade. But it’s kind of cool that I could still get spiritual nourishment out of a meal with my Christian, Jain, and even atheist friends. And I think they enjoyed it too, even though I did finally give up on trying to find a French equivalent for “Mattar Paneer.”
