“I give you my Yellow … Give me your Red!”
“I give you my Yellow … Give me your Red!”
Tonight, I was shouting this out loud as I jumped, back and forth, over a bonfire. It is Chahar Shanbe Suri – the Wednesday before Persian New Year – and jumping over the fire is an important part of the celebrations. You are speaking to the fire; having an exchange, and as you vocalize those words you remember that connection to Mother earth. We are on the earth and of the earth.
Norooz (New Year) means New Day in Farsi and is celebrated throughout West, Central and South Asia. It’s a pre-Islamic holiday started by Zoroastrians somewhere between 1200 – 550 B.C.E.
Norooz is the return of the light – warmth, growth, newness; the spring.
On Chahar Shanbe Suri it’s time to revive our inner light. Symbolically we are shedding our fears, we are melting away the rigidity that has set in, we are softening our judgment of ourselves and others. … “I give you my Yellow!”
The red of the fire is re-igniting our vitality our enthusiasm for life. We are firing up those places that may have dimmed or gotten smothered by the daily grind. The red is not just a life raft, it is a motor boat! … “You give me your Red!”
Coming out of the winter, I am re-invigorating my Theater of the Oppressed work. This weekend I’m am presenting at the Left Forum , next weekend I’m leading a workshop, and I’m planning a series of workshops in Atlanta and Detroit in the coming months. Read about all my events in my previous post.
Where are you holding onto fear? Do you have a buried hope? Today is the day! Dig it out, set it on fire, and shoot off into the stratosphere!
Norooz Mubarak! Happy New Year!
~ Kayhan