Human Flower Project

Friday, December 03, 2004

Asking Forgiveness of a River

A week belatedly, best wishes to our Thai visitors and friends on their aqua-flora-candescent holiday, Loy Krathong.

While stateside we were celebrating Thanksgiving, attending to all life’s bounties, in Thailand and where Thais have settled festivities of Loy Krathong were taking place.

In schools, on city streets, and especially along waterways, Loy Krathong (a relative of India’s Diwali)  is the season to ask forgiveness for wrongs done. People make bowl-shaped boats of banana leaves, filling them with flowers, candles and incense, sometimes adding coins too, even fingernail clippings and bits of hair.

On the night of the full moon that falls between harvest and the rainy season (usually late November), everyone sends his and her krathong floating out onto the water, an offering to the water goddess who washes guilt and strife away.

Like ritual everywhere else in the world, the 700-year-old custom of Loy Krathong undoubtedly has been flattened by commerce and cynicism. But Singapore’s Straits Times describes how recent murderous clashes between Thailand’s Buddhists and Muslims seemed to drive the larger message of the holiday home this year.

Good wishes, flowers, illumination, peace to Kriya and all our visitors with roots and waterways leading back to Thailand.