Today we celebrate All Saints Day! We encourage you to also check out these great posts written a few years ago – One Protestant’s Reflection on All Saints Day by Kathy Hempel and All Saint’s Day: An Opportunity to Remember Every Day Saints by Lynne Baab.
Below is a beautiful poem written by Ana Lisa De Jong –
THE COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS
He who sits outside time
wraps us in light.
We, a globe suspended in the sky,
are circled by the saints.
We circle the centre
of our solar systems place,
in an ancient universe
growing every day.
Yet we are still firmly
and tenderly held.
Secured by laws of gravity,
and grace.
We, who sit inside time
live tied yet to the ground
He, outside us where all is clear,
reigns in community.
We cannot know,
but sometimes have the strangest view
of a world beyond our grasp.
We sense a smile, we feel the robes
of ones gone long before.
It does not matter if we are yet to know,
enough we feel their presence.
The love of those who hold us close
in the communion of heaven.
By Jan Blencowe —
All Hallows marks an important turn on the wheel of the year. From now until the winter solstice the darkness grows.
Halloween in ancient Celtic times was known as Samhain, (pronounced sow-en, with sow rhyming with cow). It is a word that comes from two old Irish words meaning summer’s end. It is the final harvest festival of the year when pumpkins, gourds, turnips, parsnips and squash are gathered, and animals were brought back from summer pastures to the safety of barns and stables.
By Jan Blencoe
In pre-Christian times Samhain was celebrated in Ireland with great gatherings of clans and tribes. In Medieval times there were games, and feasting to celebrate the end of the growing and harvesting seasons. With the growing darkness there were stories of faerie folk, and goblins making mischief in the dark. Stories that echoed more ancient and more primitive fears.
Samhain’s association with death didn’t emerge until the church instituted the feast of All Saints on November 1, in the ninth century, and the the Feast of All Souls on November 2 in 998 AD. This is when Samhain became known as All Hallow’s Eve, the night before the feast of All Saints Day. From that point on there was a merging and mingling of celebrations around the final harvest festival, the preparations for winter, and the remembrance of the dead.
This is the time during the year when our fears of change, death, and darkness find a voice.
Why embrace a time for working with our deepest fears? Why not neutralize the fears of Halloween by designating it a children’s holiday, or skip right over it and and fast forward to All Saints and the comforting knowledge that a great cloud of witnesses has tread the path of death and entered into new life before you, and now upholds you in prayer.
By Jan Blencoe
To only focus on what comforts and soothes you is to miss the opportunity to deepen and expand your capacity to live and fully embrace all of life. It is in the dark that you begin to better understand the mysteries of life and death and to integrate with compassion those parts of yourself that seem undesirable and dark, parts that we call shadow.
Beyond the universal fears of change, death and darkness there is always the fear that you are unworthy of love. If that fear is left to itself, the uncertainty of what death might bring grows more menacing.
Carl Jung wrote “one does not become enlightened by imaginary figures of light but by making the darkness conscious”. As you pass through the gateway of Halloween into the darker half of the year it is important to allow the darkness to become conscious and instruct you.
The saints of All Saints that we remember, might be better thought of as Halloween heroes and heroines. Before being swept up into the eternal light when they were released from the body, these saints were ordinary people, not imaginary figures of light. They faced some of the deepest, darkest fears that can be known. Rejection, betrayal,, ridicule, poverty, persecution, hunger, oppression, torture, captivity, temptations and weakness, the dark night of the soul and martyrdom. It was in the darkness of fears, and the darkness of their own shadow and doubts that they were transformed.
Halloween revels in what is scary. What scares us is precisely what we need to face. The fears, doubts, betrayals, abandonments, wounds, and disappointments of life scare us. Yet, within these difficult feelings is the creative opportunity to reshape them and mold them into something new that strengthens and supports the growth and development of your soul.
Before the light of All Saints and the quiet rest of winter, during this tumultuous, dark time in the year when fruit, nut and leaf drop to the ground embracing decay and death to ensure new life, make some space to sit with what you fear. Learn what the fear has to teach you and learn how to use those lessons as part of the great cycle of life and growth that you are held within during your time on this earth. Let your descent into this place of darkness be a conscious one, so that what falls away makes space for transformation and new life to emerge. This is the gift the season of All Hallow’s Eve brings to you.
by Mary Harwell Sayler from poetry book, Faces in a Crowd
See, that’s why I don’t like to get close to you!
When least expected, your expression jades,
and your eyes reveal partially concealed blades
hinting a dagger glint. “So?” you say,
calling me out with unanswerable questions
about what I mean by this or that. If I don’t
defend myself, another point quickly comes
on which to gouge me like a pumpkin. If I
protest, a sudden scramble of barbed wire
covers you like your very best shawl. But that’s
not all! I feel as though you want to see me
squirm – or kept in line with what you find
true or good or right for you — and yet,
ironically, I want that too. So I concede:
a trick to treat myself with cooling
quiet – a way to conserve my energy
for when we meet again on All Saints Day.
By Sara Easterly —
God, help me remember the great honor it is to have these children in my life.
When I’m full of frustration because the kids don’t listen, or they talk back, or they fight with each other, or fight with me, help me to pause, to breathe, to forgive, to gently guide, and always, to love.
Help me to parent as you parent – not forcing your way, never leaving even when I behave badly, being steady enough to handle anything that might come, staying present in spite of being pulled in a bazillion different directions, not demanding gratefulness or piling on guilt even when 99.9998% of the job is completely thankless, loving no matter what.
I will never be you, but help me to try and try some more, all the same. Give me the energy and relentlessness to keep going, to get up each day with a prayer and a fresh start.
Thank you for seeing in me the mother I don’t always see in myself. Thank you for your faith in me – always – even when I’m absolutely certain I’m totally screwing it all up.
Thank you for surrounding me with a community of support. Help me to recognize and use the wide net of caring adults you’ve brought into our lives – family, teachers, pastors, coaches, neighbors, aunties, other parents, dear friends. They keep me sane and expand on what I can give when they share their unique perspectives, gifts, and love with my children. Help me discern when to pull others in, when to step out of their way, and also to know when it’s a job that’s meant exclusively for me.
Help keep my words from hurling and hurting. When they do, help me take ownership for my frustration and immaturity, remembering to apologize and to remind the kids that our relationship is stronger than any angry words I might spew.
I do not know the hair-count on my kids’ heads. Still, help me yearn to know my children as deeply as you know them. May I help them know themselves that deeply, too, so they don’t look to their peers to decide who they are or should be.
Help me remember not to take myself too seriously – to make lots of room for play and laughter and silliness and joy.
Thank you for entrusting these children to me. Help me remember that they don’t belong to me. They are their own unique individuals. You have a plan for them. May I do right by them, and by you, raising them into precisely the people you wish them to be.
Thank you for mothers everywhere. Please spread your love especially over mothers suffering from anxiety, depression, doubts, exhaustion, grief, loneliness, strained relationships, overload, or separation of any kind from their children. Bless us all so that we may bless each other and in turn, bless this hurting world.
Thank you that motherhood lasts forever. On days when this feels like a cruel trap, help me see the incredible blessing in this – that I have not only my lifetime, but also the rest of eternity, to honor and love these children according to your thoughtful design.
Amen.
by Christine Sine
I have a confession to make. Tom and I are addicted to Grand Designs, an intriguing British reality show in which each episode documents a unique home-build or renovation from start to finish. A few nights ago we watched two episodes that followed two men who built their homes in response to life changing illnesses.
Bram Vis’s house on Isle of Wright
The first episode was a financial advisor who spent more than a week in a coma following a brain hemorrhage. Following his recovery, Bram Vis and his wife Lisa build an enormous house on the Isle of Wight. Their original £850k budget spirals out of control and the final cost was close to £3 million.
The following episode was about Angelo Mastropietro, who after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis purchased an abandoned cave house in Worcestershire. The cave had probably been inhabited on and off for over a thousand year and to help him cope with his diagnosis, he planned to almost single handedly, create a contemporary but modest dwelling for on a £100,000 budget. His house is now available on airb&b Britain
What particularly struck me was the contrast between Bram and Angelo. Bram’s illness seemed to leave him with a grand sense of entitlement and the feeling that the world owed him anything that he wanted. The episode ends with him hunched over his financial books trying to figure out how he will continue to pay for his gigantic mortgage. He has little time to notice the restful beauty of the sea around his creation. I wonder if another stroke is inevitable and how his family will cope with the aftermath. (Latest information on the house is that it is on the market for £3.9 million.)
Angelo on the other hand obviously relishes the task before him, and though he ends up needing more help than he expected, finishes his one bedroom cave house for little more than his original budget. This episode ends with Angelo, his family and his friends sitting out on the newly created patio enjoying a glass of good wine and BBQ and enjoying the forest view. His project seems to have given him new life and possibly helped improve his health.
Are We Doing Violence to Our Souls?
As I reflected on these episode I was reminded of a Thomas Merton quote in Parker Palmer’s latest book On the Brink of Everything.
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist… most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work… It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work. because it kills the root of the inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
Palmer goes on to comment
Merton names one of our deepest needs: to protect and nurture the “root of inner wisdom” that makes work and life itself fruitful…. We can live that way only if we know when and where to seek sanctuary, reclaiming our souls for the purpose of loving the world. (On the Brink of Everything 140)
It seems to me that Bram is doing violence to his soul by over committing time and resource to his grand dream. Angelo on the other hand seems to have found a place of peace and sanctuary through his building.
How often do we too do violence to our souls through over work and overcommitment because we don’t know where to find sanctuary for our souls or how to nurture our inner wisdom?
As I thought about this I realized that there are a number of ways I have in the past done violence to my soul. I have overworked and over committed myself sometimes because I thought God wanted me to, at other times just because I couldn’t relax and work was the only part of my life that was in focus.
Eugene Peterson’s The Message comes to mind:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”(Matthew 11:28-30)
Recognizing that God does not intend us to overwork but invites instead into a rhythm of balance and relaxation is not only liberating but it is one of the best ways to free ourselves from the tendency to do violence to our souls.
Do We Know Where to Seek Sanctuary?
And where do we find sanctuary for our souls?
Morning doodle
You don’t have to build a house to find out.
Take a few minutes to prayerfully reflect on this today.
Take out your journal or a clean sheet of paper and some colored pens.
Close your eyes and create a free form doodle with your non dominant hand for 30 seconds repeating the question “Where do I find sanctuary for my soul?”
Open your eyes and prayerfully reflect on your doodle. What catches your attention?
Respond by coloring the shapes that emerge.
As I conducted this exercise this morning I realized that it is not the “grand designs: of my life – my writing and activism that provide me with sanctuary for my soul I find it in the small spaces of my life – the breathing exercises, reciting of poems, awe and wonder walks around Greenlake with Tom. Most of all I find sanctuary in fully entering into Sabbath each Sunday and to make sure that happens I need to plan my week so that I don’t feel tempted to write blog posts on Sundays or get ready for speaking engagements.
I love living a life with that revolves around God’s unforced rhythms of grace where my soul is nurtured by the quiet contemplative practices that center me and provide sanctuary. To do this however I must:
Plan ahead,
Commit to nurturing practices
Say no to overwork
Rest in the unforced rhythms of grace.
What is God saying to you in this moment? Where do you find sanctuary?
By Lilly Lewin
Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 The Message (MSG)
Sometimes it’s hard to be cheerful. Sometime even we Ennegram 7’s have a hard time finding the good in things and find it hard to be thankful.
As a person who deals with depression and anxiety, it’s sometimes easy to get stuck in a place of frustration and darkness rather than living in a place of light and thanksgiving. I don’t think our political climate, or the news help us either. In the past couple of years, I’ve needed to actually practice being grateful and look for the good news in our world. It’s about a month until we celebrate Thanksgiving here in America, so I am re-starting my gratitude/thankfulness practice this week and inviting people to join me. Each day I’m taking the time to write down what I am thankful for and actually taking the time to draw it out and post it on my Instagram @lillylewin.
#30daysofThankful #30DaysofThankfulness
I’d love you to join me in this practice and actually practice being thankful.
Take time each day to notice the things that bring you joy.
Take time to thank Jesus for the basics of life as well as the big things.
Get your family involved too! or your roommates or small group or your entire church community. Start now till Thanksgiving Day or start November 1st and go all the way to November 30th. Make a List! I’m doing a simple 3 a day, but you might want to list more. You could take photographs of the things you see that make you thankful, like your puppy, a rainbow or a friend’s smiling face! You could make a thankful collage, adding to it each day the words, phrases, and photographs of things you are grateful for, things that make you thankful.
And if you are looking for some good news things you can be thankful for, check out these videos and stories on line:
A reality TV star returns the favor….Watch Mike Rowe’s facebook video series
A former inmate gets a second chance…Playing Basketball
A seminary goes to prison…Northpark
My new favorite musical artist goes to prison to sing….Lauren Daigel
“Under the radar, some aspects of life on Earth are getting dramatically better.” Some Graphics
And finally, a great song that I’m thankful for.
I pray that these will bring you some hope today and you will be filled with joy and gratitude in the midst of everything.
by Christine Sine
November 1st is All Saint’s Day. This is one of my favourite celebrations as I love to look back and remind myself of those who have impacted my life – some are friends who still surround me, others are saints and supporters who have now joined the heavenly throng.The death of Eugene Peterson a couple of days ago has made me very aware of how important a celebration like this is and so I thought I would repost (with a few changes) this post from 3 years ago.
Remembering those who impact our lives, those who have gone before and those who are still with us is an important part of our faith.
The Episcopal Church website explains:
We step aside from the flow of the propers and celebrate all the saints. We stop. We notice, We are surrounded by a flock of witnesses in our midst – many who have gone before us, some we are just now releasing, and still more with a full life ahead of them.
I love the Anglican tradition of renewing our baptismal vows on this day. Reminding ourselves of the journey we have taken personally is a good place to start in remembering the saints of God. In this tradition, all baptized Christians, living and dead known and unknown are considered saints of God.
This is a special day for celebrating. First take time to reflect on your own faith journey. Remember the faithfulness of God in your past and name the people who have been particularly impacting in shaping your own faith. Notice the movement of God in the present and pray for those who continue to mentor and support you. Think about your hopes and dreams for the future and those who will help these come into being. Celebrate all that you are as a saint of God.
Celebrate At Church
If you really want to celebrate the spiritual significance of All Saints Day, a good liturgical church is the place to do so.
At St Andrew’s Episcopal which we attend, in the weeks before All Saints’ Day we prepare a ribbon of remembrance for All Saints’ Day. Write the names of those who have died on white ribbons that are then wound around the altar rail on All Saints’ Day. This is a wonderful way to reflect on the lives of those you love but have lost.
St Aidan’s Episcopal church on Camano Island where we worshipped a couple of years ago set up a special “remembering” table in the nave. The congregation was invited to bring photos or small memorabilia of dear ones who have gone before us and place them on the table. During the worship on All Saint’s Day there was a special blessing of the photos and memories.
Plan A Celebration
Many of us want to bring this celebration out of church and into our homes – here are some possibilities to consider for the future.
Hold an All Saints’ Day party – a great alternative to Halloween. Get everyone to dress as their favourite saint, or to bring a picture of this saint. During the festivities get everyone to share a story about their saint and the impact he or she has had on their lives. Or you might like to get participants to guess who each person represents.
Plan a family heritage party. Invite people to do some work beforehand researching their family history and particularly the Christian saints who were a part of it. Ask them to bring photos and stories to share. Finish with a time of prayer for all those that have gone before us.
Several years ago when my youngest brother went to Greece where my father comes from he found out that it is possible that our family name Aroney comes from the name Aaron and that our family probably originated in Jerusalem many centuries ago. It is probable that one of the reason they began the journey out of Jerusalem first to Constantinople then to Rhodes and finally to the tiny island of Kithera at the bottom of the Peloponnese mountains is because they became Christians. There are a number of Greek orthodox priests in my father’s family history and my Aunt Mary was a very devout Greek Orthodox Christian. I know less about my mother’s family history but would love to find out where her family too has had profound encounters with God.
Plan an All Saints Day pilgrimage. Again this might require some before time research. Explore the Christian heritage of your community. Where did the first Christians come from? How did they interact with the native peoples? Where was the first church established? Who were some of the early Christians who impacted your community. Plan a pilgrimage walk to the site of the first Christian community and if possible have a time of prayer and possibly even a eucharistic celebration to remember those who have gone before.
Consider an All Saints’ Scavenger Hunt with your kids. This site spells out what this could look like and provides a free template to use.
So how will you celebrate All Saints Day this year? Please share them with me. I would love to hear your creative ideas.
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