All Saints Whispers and Roars

If you to this blog hoping for election analysis, you might be more interested in this post on my creativity blog.  I spent yesterday surrounded by reminders of our mortality.  Was it Election Day or Halloween?

In some ways, I feel that the feast days of All Saints and All Souls stretch out beyond their boundaries.  Yesterday morning, I read an e-mail from a colleague who told me that her father had died.  And then, in the afternoon, one of my oldest college friends told me that his stepdad had died.  This morning, I read an e-mail from an old grad school friend who told me that her brother died.

Suddenly, I found myself just not caring about the election.  I wept for those losses, especially for my friend's brother who had just turned 60--certainly not in the death demographic.  I felt the need to tell my loved ones how dear they are to me--and so, I wrote an e-mail.

Election Day, too, reminds me of how short a time we're here.  So short a time, and so very much to do.  As I was watching results, I felt a bit ill thinking of all the work still left to do.  I thought, I wouldn't want to be elected to deal with these problems.  They feel so unsolvable.

At these times, it's good to return to the Psalms, which remind us that yes, we are grass, already in the process of passing away.  It's good to return to the Gospels which remind us that God breaks through our brokenness and brings redemption and new creation.  It's good to return to all our spiritual texts that remind us that death will not have the final answer. 

Slightly Spiritual Thoughts on Election Day

--I continue to be amazed by how many people seem to have never met anyone outside of their political tradition.  I tend towards the liberal, but I know conservatives of all sorts.  Not only that, I talk to them; we have deep, meaningful conversations.  Clearly, in the caricatures I've seen spewed by far too many people, many people assume the worst of people who aren't just like them.

--But guess what?  Most of us have similar values.  We really do.  We want our children to be safe.  We want the future to be better than the present.  Everyone I know from every part of the political spectrum believes that we'd have a stronger society if people's basic needs were met.  I've yet to meet anyone who thinks that anyone deserves to go to bed hungry. 

--I point to church as a place where we meet people who aren't just like us; it's certainly where I've met the most people outside of my demographic description.

--Church also reminds us of our stories that show that God is alive and working in the world.  During an election year, it's all too easy to tumble into despair.  But our religious institutions, when they're at their best, remind us to dream of a world that's better than the one we inhabit now.  The best of our religious institutions encourage us to transform our corner of the world, not just to wait for Heaven.

--I also look to monastic traditions, especially the ones who pray for the world, even as they have withdrawn from the world.  We can pray too.

--On a day like today, let us all remember to pray.

--Here are some prayers for Election Day:

Prayer 1:   Just and merciful God, on this day help us to be wise as we cast our ballots.  Keep us from the dangers of despair.  Remind us of the times when the oppressed have been set free, and help us to be part of that process.  Give us the courage to do what must be done.

Prayer 2:   Generous God, as we head to the polls, help us stay mindful of those who have gone before us, those who didn't have the privileges that we enjoy.  Guide us as we choose our leaders.  Help us to discern which candidates will help bring to fruition the world that you envision for us.

Prayer 3:  Triune God, remind us that no matter what happens today, the sun will rise tomorrow.  Remind us of all the leaders who seemed a disastrous pick at the time but who went on to bring about important changes that we'd have never dreamed possible.  Remind us of the leaders with hard hearts that softened.  Remind us that you are a God who can make all sorts of dreams come true.  And remind us that we have a part to play too.

Prayer 4:  Creator God, on this Election Day, we pray for our country and for all countries.  We pray for our leaders, those of the past, and those we elect today to lead us toward the future.  We pray for all citizens, that we may be involved and not passive.

Of Saints and Zoos

When I was at the library last week, I picked up the DVD copy of "We Bought a Zoo."  My spouse had wanted to watch it when it came out, and I thought it would be a light comedy.

How wrong I was.

I didn't think about the dead mother.  I didn't realize how large a role she would play.  I somehow missed the fact in the previews that the father buys the zoo when he's still deep in grief.  I wept and wept.

In many ways, however, the movie felt right for All Saints Sunday.  It showed how we deal with death, with all the ways we grieve.  It talked about the importance of stories to remembering our saints.  It showed that even when our families have been ripped asunder, we can create new families.

It's not overtly theological, but it has some interesting possibilities, especially if you've got a youth group that does movie nights.  Maybe youth groups don't do that anymore.  But I love the idea of taking mainstream films and seeing where we can extract some theological/spiritual insight from them.

It's also an interesting film about our responsibility to care for creation.  It's clear that one of the animals needs more space than the zoo has provided.  There's the beauty of the countryside.  There's an old tiger who is sick, which leads an interesting discussion of end-of-life responsibilities.  Again, lots of interesting discussions that can be had here with your family or church group.

Instead of leaving me feeling cleansed, the way tearjerker films often do, I felt a bit anxious and held onto my spouse more tightly.  Like All Saints services and traditions, this film reminds us that everything we love will be lost, and perhaps sooner than we think.  It's a good reminder that we need to cherish people while they're still on this side of the grave and huggable.

The Saint I Miss the Most Today

 Today, many Christian churches will be celebrating All Saints Sunday.  The feast day of All Saints, which celebrates all the saints, falls on November 1, and the feast day of All Souls, which celebrates the lives of those who died in the past year, falls on November 2. 

My grandmother died at the end of 2011.  I've been missing her even more in these past few days, in which we traditionally believe that the veil between the living and the dead grows thin, or even lifts.  I've wished I had a picnic to share with her.  I've wished that the picnic could contain one of her pies or the cookies I shared with many a college friend when I'd go visit her and she'd send me back to my college dorm with tins of cookies.

Above, you see her surrounded by her grandchildren in 1974; from left to right, there's my cousin Steve, my younger sister Megan, me with the theatrical hand, and in the high chair, the baby cousin Jeff.

Steve's wife, Sarah, just had their third baby last night.  The generations continue.

Above you see my grandmother with me at my MA graduation in 1989. 

Above, here she is with her great grandson Jackson (my nephew) back in 2008.  He's "reading" one of his favorite Richard Scary books, one with lots of earthmoving equipment and big trucks.

Above, here she is in 1986, with a needlepoint picture that I stitched.  It says, "There's no place like home, except Grandma's."  In a way, I agreed with that.  When I came to visit her, I often had a sense of coming home.  She lived in same house, while my parents moved a lot.   Her house seemed never-changing, while my parents often changed furniture and decorations.

She taught me a lot about familial love.  She didn't always approve of my choices; some of those choices broke her heart more severely than I knew at the time.  But she didn't cast me out.  She made her disapproval clear, sometimes harshly clear, in a way that my parents didn't.  But she continued to welcome my visits and to cook delicious meals and to send me on my way with love that expressed itself as cookies and clothes that she sewed for me.

I most treasure the stories that she told me, stories that make it clear that I come from tough stock.  I come from people who have made a way when there was no clear path to be found.  I come from people who made a tramp a fried egg sandwich, even when they hardly had enough food for their families.  I come from people who were both thrifty and generous, people who knew how to carry on in the face of sorrow.

Most of all, she showed me how to live a genuine Christian life.  One thing I can say about her:  she wasn't a hypocrite.  She lived what she believed.  I may not have always agreed with that expression, but she stayed true to her values.  And the older I get, the more I have come to cherish the most important of her core values and hope that I'm staying true to them too.

Monastery at Home

For the past 3 years, this week-end would be the one I would spend at Mepkin Abbey:  communing with monks, walking the grounds, reading, reconnecting with friends, and working on writing projects.  But because of a series of events, we moved our trip to February, and I found myself home alone while my spouse flew to his board meeting in North Carolina.

I had thought I would have a monastery-like week-end here.  I decided to go ahead and take yesterday off.  I'd gotten my leave time approved, and the end of the year approaches, when my leave time evaporates.  I decided to have a day spent in writing projects and contemplation.

It both happened that way and didn't happen that way.  I did get some work on writing projects done, but not the ones I planned to work on.  I did do some cooking, but not the bread baking that I planned to do.  To be fair, even the Mepkin monks no longer do their own bread baking, since Brother Boniface died.  I walked the grounds here, but I was mowing the lawn.

I'm most struck by silence issue.  I didn't talk much, but I had NPR on most of the day.  Our NPR station doesn't switch to music until much later in the night, so my day was filled with talk.

By the end of the day, I was feeling a bit of anxiety.  I often feel a bit of anxiety as the sun begins its slow descent.  But I think I also felt anxiety because of the coverage of Hurricane Sandy.  Would I feel the same anxiety if I didn't live on the other end of the hurricane corridor?  There's that survivor's guilt that comes from having dodged a bullet.  There's that terror in knowing that the odds are against me.  How long before it is me without power and water, picking up the sticks of my smashed house/life?

My thoughts turned to Thomas Merton; I've gotten to the point in The Life You Save May Be Your Own:  An American Pilgrimage where Merton gets permission to build the hermitage he wants, instead of the tool shed that he's been utilizing.  What would Merton make of our super-connected life?

I'm fairly certain he would tell us to turn off all of our gadgets and tune in to God.  And so, at the end of the day, I turned off the radio and picked up my prayer book (The Divine Hours, by Phyllis Tickle).  I read the Compline prayers.  I turned off the lights and fell right into sleep.

Meditation on This Sunday's Narrative Lectionary

The readings for Sunday, November 4, 2012:

1 Kings 17:1-16 (or 17:1-24)
optional reading:  Luke 4:24-26    

The reading for this week seems fitting after a week of very strange weather.  We see that bizarre weather is nothing new to us.  People in today's reading are dealing with extreme weather too.  

As a good prophet would do, Elijah trusts God, and God provides through unusual vectors.  Ravens deliver bread and meat, and this plan goes well until Elijah's stream dries up.  

God's next plan must have seemed even more impossible.  God tells Elijah to go to a more distant town and to rely on the hospitality of a widow. 

To modern ears, this idea might not seem strange, but throughout the Bible, widows are living on the narrowest of margins, the most dispossessed even in the best of times.  Indeed, she's planning to eat the last of her food and die.   But the widow shares what she has and receives abundance.  The meal and oil do not run out.  The widow, so recently prepared to eat a last meal and die with her son, finds herself fed. 

And if you read the rest of the chapter, you discover that because of the widow's hospitality, Elijah is there to save her son when he dies of illness.   Once again, we see God providing a way when it looks like none can be found.  And once again, we see God operating in ways that we might not expect. 

In this passage, God relies on outcasts to deliver sustenance:  ravens, a widow, and Elijah himself.   Again, here, we see the value of hospitality.  The widow could have refused to take Elijah in.  But by sharing the little that they had, they find that they have more than they did when they started.  

We also see another example of faith rewarded.  Elijah obeys God; he doesn't try to control God.  He doesn't say, "Ick.  I'm not eating food that's been in a raven's beak."  He doesn't decide to leave the poorest of the poor (the widow) alone and demand food from a wealthier patron.  He holds fast to God's vision.

And in the end of the chapter, we see Elijah demanding more from God.  Elijah pleads with God to save the son, and God does it.   Many a theologian will tell us that if we belive in a free-will world, that God cannot intervene in human lives unless we ask. 

This will not be the last time that we will see Biblical people demanding that God act in a more just way.  And the good news of this story is that this cry for justice is rewarded with new life.  Unlike other ancient religions, no one has to be struck down for daring to call on God to act justly.  

We, too, live in a land that needs more justice.  We, too, see that we inhabit a wrecked planet with increasingly unreliable weather.  But the Old Testament passage promises us that God will sustain us.

All Saints Day in Photos

We write their names in the book of the dead, but we wish we could do more:

If only there was some way we could communicate with those souls gone on to what will come after death:

If only we didn't have to think of them, flesh turning to dust:

But the gate between worlds seems closed to us:

What can we do but pray, and hope that they pray for us?

What can we do but hope?

We must trust that the sunset

will turn into the promise that comes with sunrise, the joy that comes after the night of weeping:

For more concrete ways to celebrate this Feast Day, see this post that I wrote several years ago.