All Saints & All Souls

So today, little sweetheart, is All Saints Day and tomorrow All Soul’s Day. Tonight is Wednesday, so there’s a Taize service at West End that I think will have some focus on the former and tomorrow I’m going to the Evensong at St. Thomas which has a Solemn Requiem. I want to say a little about all of this…

I was very intrigued to hear from one of nuns at the little rectory down on W51st - the one I pass almost every day and offer a prayer for you in the garden there where birds sweetly congregate, the residence of the order of the young women serving Sacred Heart just across the street, I often bring them something I’ve baked, treats like brownies or heart-shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting on Valentines Day.

Anyway, I happened by there with some goodies a few months ago and talked with one of the nuns about you and she asked if I was a Catholic. I said I wasn’t strictly so but that I often say Catholic prayers. She told me that she would pray for you and she also told me about The Communion of Saints. Catholics believe that The Saints intercede on our behalf and that we ask them to look after our beloveds, as I ask they do of you. I was very intrigued by the idea, so I also talked to that nice girl I’ve told you about at the little church (West End) where I go, Reverend Jes, and she said that Protestants have a similar idea but that it involves all those Great Souls, saints and others alike, who have passed and that we call them The Great Cloud of Witnesses. Unlike Catholics who believe that the Saints must intercede for us, Protestants believe we may make our prayers directly, which also explains a little of the different ideas of the two churches with priests on the one hand and ministers on the other.

They’re both beautiful ideas, lovely thoughts, I think, and I’m not so sure we need to choose between them or pit them one against the other.

I think when we talk of all this, when we talk of God and heaven and souls and saints and spirits and prayers what we’re doing is using all the words and language we have for things we simply can’t fully know or comprehend or truly describe because the things we’re speaking of are immortal and we are still on earth. That wonderful passage in Corinthians touches on it - “Now we see through a glass, darkly. Then, we shall see face to face. Our knowledge is imperfect now. Then, we will know even as we are known.”

We can’t comprehend the complexity of what we are more than our earthly selves, our bodies. But we can apprehend. It’s not a word we use in this context much in the modern era but it means a kind of knowing by a feeling. We can’t comprehend it with our mind but we can apprehend it by something more that stirs inside us. And that something more inside is really our essence, it is what we are and it is eternal. Just as I know, as I apprehend you are. You are eternal. You. Are.

When we talk of God, our uttering will be incomplete, miss the mark a bit. But the fact that we do speak and think and pray moves us toward that essence, moves us toward the eternal, I think.

I was watching that documentary about George Harrison again the other night, little sweetheart, and something he said struck me. It was how he was drawn to God after his first visit to India. He’d grown up Catholic but lapsed because it ceased to move him. But someone said something to him in India, something about you can’t simply blindly believe because you’re told to. You must have direct experience. And that experience, I think, my darling, is love.

It’s inside us and when we share it - as you told me you knew you born to - we feel it multiply and swell within us further, as if our chests might explode. Love is our direct experience of God, of what we can never quite adequately name or describe. But we apprehend. And our efforts, however childlike, if they come from within our hearts truly, should never be denigrated because they’re not sophisticated or perfect.

Our knowledge is imperfect now. It’s the impulse and the reaching beyond our grasp that’s the thing. The goodly thing. “There’s always time for a prayer”, I often say to myself now, little sweetheart. That and “calm down.” Ha! I must say that to myself a thousand times a day. I’m more than a little strange, a little lost, a little striving in your physical absence.

But I know that you are because I apprehend it and we have loved. We do love. I apprehend it still and I love you forever.

So, I’ll mix up the denominational devotions today and tomorrow and call on both the saints and directly beneath The Cloud of Witness. I’ll call for you and I’ll pray for your being safely in the care of God. Every day is good day for that, so why not redouble our efforts on a day designated just for that very thing? Isn’t that what we do on our secular holidays? We’re not only grateful on Thanksgiving. We don’t only shower our loved ones with gifts on their birthdays or at Christmas. But it’s another special day to share our love. And love is never redundant.

So, even though there’s so much I can’t yet know and some may say I’m doing it all wrong, I won’t let that stop me. I will call to you and call for you. And that is the important thing.

Didn’t you tell me the very thing yourself? What did you say to me, my darling?

“We falter blindly and strive endlessly. But wherever you are, whether you should be there or not and no matter who is present, know that you are a treasure in your own right. If the chest is buried, the key is lost or the map stolen, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s inside you. I just see what’s there. You carry it with you. What’s hidden can always be found.”

Yes, my darling girl. You will find me, we will find each other again and soon and forever. With all my love….