As we get ready for All Saints Day consider taking time to reflect on the footprints you will leave in this world. I love this song by Steve Green which has inspired me for many years to consider this.
Close your eyes and listen to this song. Allow your mind to drift back over the years of your life. What are the footprints you have already left behind that will be signposts for others to follow?
When most people who are dying look back on their lives their greatest regrets revolve around not following their passions or doing what would most impact the world. For many of us there is still time to follow what really matters. As you remember the saints who have gone before and impacted your life with their passion and commitment, think about your own future.
What would you like to accomplish? What is the legacy you would like to leave behind for the saints that come after you?
Listen to the song again. Take out your journal and write down the images that came to your mind. Now get out some coloured markers or crayons.
Highlight the things on your list that are possible now.
Underline in another colour the ones that will take some effort to accomplish. Perhaps there is training you need to do, or people you need to get in contact with.
Circle in yet another colour the items on your list that seem impossible.
Keep you list at the front of your journal or your bible. Read over it each day. Pray over those things that seem impossible and allow God to change you so that you are indeed able to accomplish all that God intends you to.
Sunday is All Saint’s Day. 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.
It is Halloween in a few days and parents are gearing up to send their kids out in all kinds of fancy costumes. As I mentioned in my last year’s post Halloween Is Coming – Resources for a Green, Fair Trade, and Ethical Halloween, some Christians see this celebration as evil and like to stay home with lights off. Others feel we should participate in ways that engage and redeem the culture.
Whatever your approach to Halloween, I think there are some things that all of us should be aware of.
Toxicity of Face Paint.
As this helpful article says: a lack of regulation in the cosmetic industry and misleading marketing labels mean that parents may unknowingly spread harmful ingredients on their child’s skin. They list the few safe paints: Elegant Minerals, Glob face paints, and a recipe for DIY paint. I also found this really inexpensive and simple alternative to purchased face paints which the website says is safe enough to eat, and though we may not want to experiment some of our kids probably will.
Safety Tips for Halloween
The CDC has an excellent list of safety tips to think about as you both dress and send your kids out.
And another great list from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
And probably one of the most important: A big part of Halloween safety is making sure drivers can see your kids as they’re crossing the street or walking from house to house. Give your trick-or-treaters their own flashlights and/or light-up or glow-in-the-dark accessories.
The Candy Problem
A poll taken in 2017 showed that 41 million kids in the U.S. go trick or treating. In 2019, Americans spent something like 2.6 billion on Halloween candy. No wonder one out of three children in America are overweight and many will develop diabetes. Consider making your own healthy treats, giving out non-food items like polished stones, temporary tattoos, or friendship bracelets.
Reverse Trick or Treating
Most chocolate sold in the US is tainted by child slavery and exploitative conditions for adult workers. Fair trade eliminates child labour and ensures healthy working conditions with a living wage for workers. Thousands of groups of Trick-or-Treaters in the United States and Canada unite at Halloween each year to help:
- END poverty among cocoa farmers
- END forced/abusive child labor in the cocoa industry
- PROTECT the environment
- PROMOTE Fair Trade
How? By distributing Fair Trade chocolate to adults, attached to a card explaining these problems in the cocoa industry and how Fair Trade presents a solution. You can learn more about this initiative here.
What Do You Do With All Those Pumpkins?
You don’t have to let your pumpkins rot on the front porch or throw them out. They really are some of my favourite vegetables. Here are some great recipes:
- Pumpkin Soup Carribbean Style with Black Beans
- Walk Through the Garden Soup
- Pumpkin Bread: This is a great recipe – and as it says, it is adaptable.
- Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins: I chose this recipe because it’s fairly healthy, uses whole wheat flour and recommends making mini rather than full sized muffins – cuts down on the portion size. There are lots of other great pumpkin recipes on this site.
- Gluten Free, Grain Free Chocolate Chip Muffins: I have not tried this recipe but it looks interesting – uses almond butter and honey instead of sugar.
- Gluten Free Pumpkin Oatmeal Anytime Squares: Again I have not tried these but they look very interesting.
Does a tree ever worry about losing its leaves? Or does it have an innate knowledge, that governed by the laws of nature; its leaves, though they may fall, will return again. Yes, we can learn great lessons from the silent trees. To learn to shed what is no longer needed without regret. To trust in the seasons, and in spring’s eventual return.
One of my recent journal entries, reads, ‘even people do not belong to us. We must let them go like falling leaves in autumn. The tree cannot hold its leaves, if it tried with all its might. It will only hurt itself trying. Leaves were made to fall. Only God stands sure, His promises secure for us forever. The leaves in this world are transient, impermanent. They are made to fall. The tree connected to God is not afraid of loss for its life-blood is connected to Him who will never fail us, or let us go, or let us down.’
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NIV)
Today as I was contemplating what to write on my first post on Godspace, I was reminded how my thoughts had kept returning to the trees, and their lessons to us. And in the wonderful way God works, I came across the following quote by Herman Hesse, published by Weavings Magazine.
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers… Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows know to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” Hermann Hesse
Thank you trees for your enduring lessons. I pray we may learn to lose our leaves without regret, knowing we will retain what matters. And that we may remember also that constant renewal is another law of life, upon which we can depend.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
Fooling Ourselves
We fool ourselves.
Believe ourselves to be attached fast
to the leaf.
But shaking in the wind,
as blossoms on the branch;
buffeted enough,
we find ourselves,
airborne.
We fool ourselves.
That it won’t be our turn.
Comforting others,
measuring out
our careful wisdom.
We forget there will be a day,
we will need,
our own medicine.
But we all have our days,
in the sun,
when we blossom, and bloom.
While the days in the wind,
we resist and turn from;
though they come
unrelenting,
to everyone.
So I fool myself.
Believe myself secure,
and steadfast.
Living tree, roots deep in the ground.
And I am: deeply rooted,
and aware of my source.
Yet the wind, with a life of its own,
still abounds.
But what if I said ‘come’?
Come wind, what may.
Lift my blossoms, torn off my limbs,
give them breath, and uplift.
Show them the view
from up high.
Show them there’s more ahead,
than what I can see, right now.
And that my security,
my security lies not,
in holding on, till my petals are damp,
and torn.
But in letting go,
in finding freedom in the uncertainty,
trusting in the life source
of all things.
“So, I close my eyes to old ends and open my heart to new beginnings” Nick Frederickson
Ana Lisa de Jong enjoys her work as an Administrator for the New Zealand Defence Force Chaplaincy team. Most of all though she enjoys writing, nature, relationships, and God – not necessarily in that order. Since waiting until her 40’s to rediscover the joy of writing, Ana Lisa has contributed to Refresh Journal of Contemplative Spirituality, Scriptural Nuggets, Turning the Page, and Godspace. She released her first inspirational poetry volume ‘Songs in the Night – Poetry for the Soul’, in 2014. Finding plenty of words still coming, Ana Lisa’s second volume of her ‘Poetry for the Soul’ series, ‘Hope Springs’ is winging its way to print. Ana Lisa lives in the beautiful North West region of Auckland, New Zealand with her husband and two children.
Connect with her website, on Facebook, and through New Zealand Christian Writers
Over the last few days I have been reading Joan Chittister’s book The Monastery of the Heart. To be honest when the book arrived I was a little disappointed to see that it was merely a collection of verses arranged in short chapters that covered the basic tenets of Benedict’s rule. However as I started to read I was transfixed. Each verse is a rich feast of wisdom and insight for a remarkable woman who has “lived life well” in a monastery for more than 50 years.
Joan Chittister uses the Rule of Benedict as a framework for a guide to a more purposeful way of being in our time of social upheavals and global transformation. She contents that Benedict’s rule provides guidelines for living a meaningful spiritual life in the centre of the world today rather than withdrawing from it. Inviting the participation of seekers of all faiths or no faith, she calls this the Monastery of the Heart.
Here are a few gems that I have picked up from reading the book:
The search for God
is a very intimate enterprise.
It is at the core
of every longing in the human heart.
It is the search for ultimate love,
for total belonging,
for the meaning of life. (13)The search for God depends on the desire
to grow to full stature as a spiritual adult,
to come to know the God
who is present in darkness
as in light. (16)The bearer of the monastic heart,
either alone or with an intentional group,
must radiate
what is within
to a wider world
and respond to it. (29)We are at the disposal
of the human race,
in whatever form or function
it presents itself to us:
as neighbour,
as family,
as citizen,
as stranger,
as artist,
as disciples together
on the way to God (131)I heartily recommend this little book. Read it slowly and draw in the wisdom of this amazing woman.
Enjoy his short video by Joan about the book:
My friend Kim loves to collect heart shaped rocks, and when I walked along the beach with her this last summer, I got into the spirit of it. What surprised me is how many heart shaped rocks there are around, nestled in amongst other shapes and sized. I never noticed them until I started looking however.
Looking for heart shaped rocks is a little like looking for the love of God. We often don’t noticed it, nestled down into the crevasses of our lives until we start to very deliberately look for it. It hovers over us like a canopy of warmth and protection. It walks beside us like an embrace of friendship and comfort. It penetrates inside us like a flame igniting the God presence within.
What is your response?
What “heart shaped rocks of blessing” have you failed to notice? Sit quietly and nestle into the love of God. Close your eyes and imagine God hovering above you. What do you see? Are there ways God is prompting you to open your eyes to be more aware of that loving presence?
Now imagine God walking beside you. What comes to mind? Are there ways that God is inviting you to follow more closely?
Now imagine God deep within your heart. In what ways are you aware of God’s presence radiating within you? Are there steps you need to take to walk more intimately with God?
heart shaped rocks from a summer beach walk
I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. (Ephesians 3:16-19 NLT)
The blessings of God can be summed up in one word – love. Living into the blessing of that love which dwells above, around and within is the journey of our lives. The journey towards God is a journey towards unconditional love, towards belonging and towards a meaningful life.
What is your response?
Watch the video below. What heart shaped encounters have you had recently with God? Write a love letter to God spelling out the blessings of God’s presence within, around and above you. Sit quietly and read through what you have written, relishing the new found intimacy that I am sure this will bring.
In my work within a prison chaplaincy in the high security estate I became increasingly aware of the real deprivations that are involved by incarceration. Prison is, of course, by it’s very nature, considered to be first and foremost a penalty meted out to redress and punish some wrong doing and personal deprivation is part of that punishment. Choices are stripped away and the relentless monotony of day to day prison life hits home and little by little strips back any humanity that may be present in the inmate.
It became evident to me that making the most ordinary journeys- from bed to bathroom, to kitchen – From home to work, school, church. These simple movements were no longer available to these men and I experienced a moment of deep sadness for them because I understood, perhaps for the first time, how very significant these journeys are to each life. It is through them, in part, that we come to understand ourselves. One day we choose to take a particular route because we love the tree lined avenue that is changing with the seasons or another route because we can pick up a delicious frothy latte from the little coffee shop with the nice barista or there is a hedgerow filled with tiny birds singing, an apple orchard, a friend’s house, a long fast road to drive down….. these tiny almost unconsidered choices shape and inform our thinking, our day, who we are and yet we are barely conscious of them.
I facilitated a Bible Study group that was well attended by a faithful group of men, mostly Christian but open to anyone and undertaken freely and as a choice. It usually meant that they had to sacrifice a gym session to participate (a big thing for a man in prison confined to a small cell for many hours of the day), the gym is an outlet for their constrained physicality and much needed to expend pent up aggression. So choosing Bible Study was a great commitment to God on their part.
It seemed very important to provide a journey for my group, something to restore humanity and at the same time deepen faith. A journey to be shared at the deepest level. I decided to organise a ‘pilgrimage’ to the Holy Land over the weeks of Lent. An invitation ‘Road to Jerusalem – A Modern Pilgrimage’ was placed on the seats at the Sunday services so that they could sign up for the trip by choice.
I prepared for each of them a personal passport for our travels through the various parts of Christ’s own country. It would be stamped each week and special documents enclosed as a record of their visit to Nazareth, Judea, Galilee, Bethlehem the Garden of Gethsemane etc. The picture in the passport was a drawing of Christ that one man had beautifully executed as a gift for his prison visitor and gave permission for me to use. The idea behind this ‘is Christ in us’, that when we looked at our ‘photograph’ we searched for the image of God knowing He is there, that this is our picture. I invited other members of the Christian chaplaincy team to join me and be our guide in the different places we visited each week. We had a map of the countryside we would travel through, with our route marked out on it.
This picture drawn by one of the prisoners and the one I used in the ‘passports’ for each of us. It was a black biro drawing and one of the most beautiful depictions of Christ I have ever seen. It moves me still to look at it. (Ana Lisa De Jong)
The team leading consisted of a Catholic, Anglican, Quaker, Free Church and Methodist so each week took on a beautiful shape of it’s own informed by the individual and their way of relating to Jesus. We journeyed through Christ’s life from birth to death visiting the places mentioned in scripture, experiencing sights (through pictures and photographs), the smells through herbs and spices brought up from the prison kitchen and a fragrant oil, the sounds through music, prayer and silence, the colour and feel of the place through fabric rough and smooth. Our senses were drenched in the experience. A rarity in the prison where one’s senses are emphatically dumbed down to ensure the men are manageable and kept under control. We explored through our senses, the nature of Christ and His ministry, labyrinths, travelling together and alone, fasting and feasting.
The final part of our journey took place in Holy Week and involved me chalking out a labyrinth on the carpet tiles in the large chapel with a large wooden freestanding cross at it’s centre. We walked the labyrinth together and alone, in our own time but considering another’s pace, arriving at the centre to stand before the cross. Many of the men fell to their knees silently weeping and worshiping the living God. We were provided with a sublime moment of faith on that day and our pilgrimage was complete. We moved into the Easter Triduum with a deeper sense of ourselves and so of Christ, with God at our centre and without circumference.
I know that while making this pilgrimage, the men were encouraged to regard each of the smaller journeys they were making within each day as something sacred, a private prayer. The walk from cell to the workshop, from healthcare to chapel, from corridor to corridor, contained opportunity to meet with Christ, be His feet, His hands and His mouth. To see through His eyes the officers on duty. To really live those small simple journeys in a different way, the Way, the only way. To make ‘doing their time’ different, better. It was a journey I will never forget and one that has proved to leave a lasting impression upon my own walk in faith.
Alice Hoefkens is married to Jerome. They have 4 children and live in the Cotswolds at the heart of the UK. She has worked in the chaplaincy of a maximum security prison providing pastoral care for prisoners and staff, introductory courses to Christianity, devising and facilitating new and imaginative ways to explore and deepen faith and in building unity of faith among her fellow chaplaincy team through creating shared projects. Prior to this she worked in a Psycho-Geriatric Home for the elderly as a carer and was made the POVA representative for the religious sisters who were her colleagues. It has always been important to her to use every and any available tool to reveal the person of Christ to others: music, art, poetry, nature, fabric, fragrance, whatever may present as itself at a given time as a symbol of the love of God.
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