Instead of asserting that death is an ending to be feared, a long-standing tradition in Mexico, El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), teaches that the dead should be celebrated for the lives they lived and for everyone they affected.

"It embraces our dying as part of our greater lives in the generosity of spirit," said Richard Lyon, who will lead the Invocation of the Dead at Carbondale's Dia de los Muertos celebration Saturday.

Lyon, a company actor and associate artist with the Thunder River Theatre Company, which partners with the Carbondal Council on Arts and Humanities on the event, first experienced a Dia de los Muertos celebration 12 years ago when he performed with a Spanish-language theater in Oregon.

"It was there that I marveled at the opening invocation and especially the closing ritual of our public performances, in which the entire audience was invited to call out the names of their beloved ones who had passed over," Lyon said. "After each name was announced, the whole audience responded by shouting out, '¡Que viva!' meaning, 'That they shall live!'"