Urbanowski: United through arts and culture

Arts are embedded and integral in every culture, in our spiritual practices and in our community traditions.

When we talk about supporting arts and culture, one of the things we are talking about is empowering the culture bearers and artists who preserve our traditions, capture our yearnings, help us find meaning in the inexplicable and honor our gods. The arts celebrate what it means to be human and be in social contract with others.

This month we mark the Vernal Equinox, the moment of balance between day and night, when spring and renewal are celebrated and acknowledged through rituals, spiritual practices and creative expressions by hundreds of cultures, countries and people throughout the world.

Different cultures have their own ways of marking the changing of the seasons: there are mass water fights in Thailand, sun worship at Mayan pyramids, egg-standing battles in China and feasting in Iran. And artists capture these moments in song, dance and poetry.

Holi, on the Hindu calendar and falling close to the spring equinox, is a party lasting for two days. We take to the streets to throw fantastically bright colored powders in celebration of fertility and love, against a backdrop of music and dancing.

Nowruz, Iranian New Year or Persian New Year, is marked by countries with significant Persian cultural influences with festivals that include fire and water rituals, celebratory dances, gift exchanges and poetry recitations.

At the Temple of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza on the Yucatán peninsula, visitors gather during the equinox to witness the late afternoon sun strike the northwest corner of the temple, creating the illusion of the feathered serpent “crawling” down the temple staircase, symbolizing the return of an ancient god to earth, bringing hope for spring.

In Poland, where my father’s family is from, they still observe the “drowning of Marzanna” to celebrate the end of winter. Marzanna, the ancient goddess associated with winter’s death, rebirth and dreams, is burned in effigy and symbolically drowned in the river to be reborn as the goddess of spring.

Our culture bearers preserve our traditions and guide us. And our artists capture our need to find the light at the end of the dark winter.

So, at this moment, when the cultural diversity of our country is being devalued, artists of color are under attack and cultural heritage maligned, let us lift one another up through our rituals and celebrate the mosaic of cultural diversity that makes us strong. Now is the time to embrace, honor and support the artists who guide us through the moments that unite us.

SPRING, by Mary Oliver

And here is the serpent again,
dragging himself out from his nest of darkness,
his cave under the dark rocks,
his winter-death.
He slides over the pine needles.
He loops around the branches of rising grass,
looking for the sun.

Well who doesn’t want the sun after a long winter?
I step aside,
he feels the air with his soft tongue,
around the bones of his body he moves like oil.

downhill he goes
toward the black mirrors of the pond.
Last night it was still so cold
I woke and went out to stand in the yard,
and there was no moon.

So I just stood there inside the jaw of nothing.
An owl cried in the distance,
I thought of Jesus, how he
crouched in the dark for two nights,
and floated back above the horizon.

There are so many stories
more beautiful than answers
I follow the snake down to the pond,
thick and musty he is
as circular as hope.

Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation

Alexandra Urbanowski is CEO of SV Creates, the state and county designated arts service organization and local arts agency for Santa Clara County. She serves on the leadership committee for the California Coalition of County Art Agencies and as a board member at the School of Arts and Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza. Her columns appear every first Wednesday of the month. Contact Alexandra at [email protected].