Each year around All Saints Day, the churches I have served celebratesthe “Day of the Dead” or El Diá de los Muertos.  In Mexico, this holiday is a joyous remembrance of people who have died. At my church we have a collective altar decorated (this year) with fruit, flowers, candles, pan de muerto (bread of the dead!), and images of our beloved dead.  This year we will invite members to bring an object or food each person particularly loved.  We will invite people to tell stories about them, celebrating their lives, our love for them, and their love for us.

People in many cultures believe the veil separating the living and the dead is especially thin at this time of year, making communication in dreams and in spirit more easy.  Perhaps we believe this in the northern hemisphere because in most places plants are dying or at least going dormant.  Autumn is a time of transition, not unlike the transition that is death.

Clergy often sit with people during transitions like that from life to death, particularly hospice chaplains.  Furthermore, as leaders clergy people are called to assist or even lead congregations through transitions that can be painful. After all, part of any transition or change is facing what feels like death – the death of what used to be. As the poet Langston Hughes wrote, “Dear Lovely Death, Change is thy other name.”

Episcopalian Brian Wren writes fine hymns with wonderful, creative, and often surprising images.  In one hymn, “Name Unnamed” he lifts up many different images of the Divine, including “Midwife of Changes, skillfully guiding, drawing us out through the shock of the new, Woman of Wisdom, deeply perceiving, never deceiving, freeing and leading in all that we do.”  I love this hymn, and thinking of Source as midwife and wise woman.

What if we thought of guiding or leading transitions as midwifery rather than hospice chaplaincy?  In transitions what was dies, but what is to be is also born or created.  Anyone who has experienced birth knows that the most scary, dangerous and painful time is what’s called “transition labor.”  Transition labor is the time of rapid change when the mother feels she will never make it, and may call the father bad names.  During transition labor midwives reassure and encourage the parents while keeping a careful watch, safeguarding the lives of both child and mother.  It is a risky phase for both of them.

These are apt metaphors for the ministry of transitions.  Whether or not we are professional ministers, we all regularly observe or participate in the sacred process of transformation.  As midwives of change, cooperating with the Sacred in this process, we must be very attentive during periods of painful, rapid change - guiding people through the shock of the new.  It seems to me that our world is in a period of transition labor right now.  There is a great deal of painful, rapid change occurring around the globe.

What would happen if we saw ourselves as midwives of this “transition labor” that is bringing something new to birth?  Following the metaphor, we would recognize that this is at time of great risk both to what has been and to what could be coming.  We would act to safeguard the process without stopping or inhibiting it, trusting in the life of what is to be. We would also act to reassure and encourage all the stakeholders in the process. We would wisely perceive, never deceive, leading and freeing, as Wren writes.

Birth is stressful but nearly always has a joyful result.  A child is related to its parents, and yet a unique, new individual. A child changes the lives of the parents forever, in ways that are challenging and that require maturity.  What if we saw all the change in our country and around the world as a process of birthing (painfully, perhaps) something related to what has been, but that creation has never before seen? What if we saw our role as helping the Divine midwife that change?  Dear Lovely Birth, Change is thy other name.

I have a confession to make.  I had given up hope.  For most of my life I have been an idealist, working for change, marching for heartfelt causes, demonstrating against war and greed,  for peace and integrity. My main concerns were for economic justice and nonviolent resolutions to social and political differences.

In the past several years, multinational corporations' unstoppable dominance over our media and our political process has led me to cynicism and despair.  It is hard to watch our government's increasing disregard for our poorest people, the systematic annihilation of the blue collar middle class, and what seems like endless warfare to protect and promote our addiction to petroleum.

All that seems to matter to most of our politicians is gaining and holding onto power. For that you need money, the backing of multinational corporations and those who hold wealth. Politicians who want to be re-elected cannot promote any real reforms.  And so despite high-flown rhetoric that periodically raise my hopes for the country I love, no real change happens and my hopes are dashed, again and again.

Mark Twain is quoted as saying that we have the finest Congress money can buy, and it still seems true to me.  It no longer feels to me like we have a democracy, but a plutocracy, a government of, by, and for the wealthy.  Using the language of democracy to promote corporate interests is as bad using religious language to justify terrorism, violence, and intolerance.  It goes so far beyond hypocrisy in my eyes that I just want to close them.

After so many body blows, my idealism decided to stay on the mat and let the bell ring.  I stopped listening to news that crowed the triumphs of greed and violence over common people and sovereign nations.  I elected to stop my ears, go about my daily work, and withdraw from a political process that seems rigged not only against me but against democracy.  I believe in democracy, its underlying principles and the promise it could hold.  I wish we still had it in our country. It seemed like that nothing I could do would turn the political tide.

Then there was the economic downturn of 2008.  I have seen the effects of long-term unemployment (loss of self-esteem,  depression and despair) not only in members of my congregation but also among my family and friends.  It surprised me to hear recently that we're in a new economic slump.  I had not realized we were out of the last one.  In fact, I had thought it was slowly worsening.  I feared for my son and all our children.  What would this mean for them?

The only thing that seemed to "recover" was Wall Street. It is cold comfort for those who are jobless, who have lost their homes,who have no access to health care, to hear that things have improved for the richest people, enormous corporations.  It is cold comfort to know that the people whose greed and graft led to a supposed need for a bailout are becoming richer because of it, when conditions for so many of us slowly worsen.  What sort of marker is the Dow Industrial Average for real, person-centered economic recovery?

Then a couple weeks ago I started hearing of a movement to Occupy Wall Street.  I did not hear about it from the national media, but through the same sorts of social networks that supported the Arab Spring. (Funny, that.  Is this the United States Fall?)  The more I read and heard about it,  the more heartened I have become.

I do not know if it will make any difference, this real populist movement for  tax reform and accountability. To the extent that we truly have democracy, perhaps it will. Whether or not it succeeds in promoting  reform, it is heartening to see some people rise from the mat and assume a stance, any stance, against the giants.   Images of David and Goliath come to me.

The demonstrators' courage heartens me.  Their insistence that they have a right to be heard, and to use the rights guaranteed by our constitution in gaining that hearing gives me some hope.  They remind me of something Ghandi said, that satisfaction lies in the effort, not the attainment - that full effort is full victory.  Some of my colleagues have joined and supported the demonstrators.  Me, too.  I may not be the idealist of my younger days, but I want to make an effort.  I am rising off the mat.

How many Davids will it take to have any effect on this Goliath that we're told is "too large to fail?"  Perhaps it  is really to large and influential not to prevail?  I don't know.  Perhaps we will never have the numbers to gain any ground, but at least I will do what I can to hold what little we have.