(no subject)

[taerowyn]

The Forest Hills Cemetery has a yearly Lantern Festival:

Our memorial Lantern Floating Festival is inspired by an ancient Buddhist ritual in which lanterns representing the souls of the dead are floated out to sea and prayers are offered so that they may rest in peace. Join us for this beautiful ceremony. Inscribe your own words of remembrance and hope on the shades of simple wooden lanterns, and then release them, glimmering with candlelight, onto Lake Hibiscus at dusk.

I've heard about it ever since moving to Boston and finally got around to going this year when they held it a few weeks ago. It was a little surreal...Buddhist tradition in a Victorian cemetery at which there were Gospel performances. Huh?!?

I'd told my folks about it and they each requested I send lanterns for them; my mom even wrote a note, scanned it and emailed it to me so I could afix it to a lantern. I made theirs and took the pictures for them. Setting the lanterns afloat was neat, especially seeing them all around the lake. I did learn a good lesson for future visits: waiting before launching lanterns to see which way they arepredominantly drifitng as mine were quickly caught at shore.