On All Saints

1

At my age, the idea of school should be a wistful and fond recollection, a harkening back to younger days when the midnight oil was left dry by morning.

The song sung by a creaking back and cracking knees was then unheard and not as familiar as the morning dove relentlessly cooing a seeming reply to my orchestral dotage.

And it is.

I have fond memories of those days long ago and yet later in life, I returned to school.

My more recent school memories are interspersed with recollections of busyness, of work and school, of picking up the kids at school and school, of cheer competitions and school, track meets and school.

And CPE.

Clinical Pastoral Education, that part of a priest’s formation spent learning how to walk with people experiencing medical things, trauma and dying, facing sickness and large bills,

And there are memories of patients sharing their own recollections of when their lives were more active, when the kids were home and small and in front of a wispy Christmas tree made perfect through the frosted glass of fondness.

It was during CPE that I learned about the idea of family systems theory.

You see, the theory is, we all carry stories with us and so when we interact with a person, we are not only interacting with that person one on one, but a whole cloud of stories that individual is carrying with them.

Perhaps a person is rude and mean and not easy deal with, perhaps they lash out all the time even unexpectedly.

If we look at that person as just a single human being, we may discount their behavior, we may avoid them or even shun them.

After all, who wants to be treated in such a way?

And yet, if we understand that people carry stories with them, carry with them a hardscrabble childhood, a rough upbringing, well, it doesn’t necessarily excuse bad behavior but we can perhaps understand it better.

And we don’t even have to know the details of what folks are holding on to, what shapes people into who they become, we only have to know that certain things impact people differently.

Rude behavior is not something we need to add to our own story because it has already been taken on by somebody else.

We can look past such behavior as not our own.

We can instead attempt to find commonality in that person.

We can try to build relationship with that person.

We can even try to love that person and love that person as God loves us and commands us to love each other.

2

I do like to hike.

Despite creaking back and cracking knees, I do like to hike.

So, it made sense that I found myself on the edge of a wood in a clearing, the trees were behind me and in front of me and around me, but I was under the noonday sun.

High in the sky with a welcoming warmth on my t-shirted shoulders.

This was a meadow in the woods, the grass was knee high, I wonder now if there were ticks in the grass.

Though there was a trail it was not much of one, the grass hid the narrow dirt path; the stony New England ground provided hazards uncovered thousands of years ago when the glaciers receded and left the best soil in offshore.

We now call it Long Island.

I crossed the meadow and I wonder now if my socks were long and that is why I remained unbitten.

I walked along the path with brightness in my eyes, the sun shining upon me contrasted to the other side of the green tall grass where the log pole pines stood erect and offered shade and cover.

It was where I came from; it was where I was headed.

The heat of sunshine would soon turn to the cool of shadow; I hiked through the meadow.

As I drew closer to the other side, I saw a figure emerge.

Doubtful at first, I squinted into the shade of trees on the other side of the green, green grass.

I saw him.

I knew him.

I saw my grandfather emerge from cover of trees and I stopped.

My two feet stuck in the ground, they were unmolested by the ticks I wonder about today.

He looked good.

Strong.

His silver white hair was perfect, he was tanned from the Jersey shore.

He lost his limp acquired years ago when a back surgery did not quite go right.

He put up his hand, stoic at first he smiled.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed you,” I replied.

3

Just as we carry stories, just as our moods and our experienced past, our heartaches and heartbreaks, our victories and stories of love won and kept define who we are, we too carry with us a wonderful and holy great cloud of witnesses.

These are the people who influence and have long since died.

These are the people whose recipes we continue to share and the feeling of their touch as they stroke your cheek with the back of your hand is just as real now as it was when you were but a child.

The hairy lipped kiss of my great grandmother’s greeting as I walked up her front stoop still tickles my cheek to this day.

This cloud is the echoing reminder that we were loved and we celebrate that love and that love does not die because we can still feel, still remember the physical things, the warmth blanket involved in a good cuddle remains even if those we shared that blanket are now gone.

And we do not forget because these are not memories of the mind, of facts and tables and dates and such, they are instead memories of the heart where they are felt and felt hard.

It makes sense now that I didn’t have to worry about ticks, because when I met my grandfather on the edge of that wood, when I spoke to him and told him I missed him, when I felt that warmth in my heart and on my shoulders, when I knew, knew he was there in front of me, giving me a hearty wave, it makes sense because it was just a dream.

My grandfather had died months before that dream.

I had carried on up until that dream.

And at the time I had carried too a certain amount of guilt before that dream.

Guilt that I never got to say ‘see you later’ after his last visit to Connecticut, that I had gone out with some friends and by the time I arrived back home in the afternoon, he and my grandmother had started heading home.

And yet there are times when the space between us and the loved ones we miss and pray are well is thin.

You see, there are times, the ancients believed, when there are thin spaces between us and the eternal, when we can feel closer to those who have gone before.

This time of All Saints, this day of celebrating those saints we love and no longer see is a time of thin spaces.

4

Daniel had a great and terrible dream.

He dreamed of four beasts,

The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. …and its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being; and a human mind was given to it. … a second one…looked like a bear… (with)… three tusks in its mouth among its teeth and was told, “Arise, devour many bodies…(A)nother appeared, like a leopard. The (leopard) had four wings of a bird on its back and four heads; and dominion was given to it. …(And the) fourth beast… (was) terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron…

And in this dreams with these beasts of horns and teeth, Daniel was told, “the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.”

These terrible beasts might devour the unholy, they might do away with many bodies, but the holy and the innocent shall possess the kingdom forever.

And though terrible as it was this dream reminds us ours is the kingdom if we follow God’s law and live as God wishes us to live, if we do to others as others as you would have others do to you.

Daniel found a thin place and in that place he was reassured that despite all the terror and tremors this world holds, the good will realize salvation.

5

Through the veil, through the thin and shimmering veil we see all that is promised to us, we almost touch those we love and who have died through the memory of their hand in ours and our hand in theirs, we are not far from love.

And with that love…

With that love we can manifest the kingdom that God so wishes us to experience here and now and on this day and within this world.

For that love is not far off, it is here.

The love of the saints lives amongst us, the embodiment of that love is God’s love and the manifestation of that love is how we treat each other, how we lift up each other and do not devour those who would be set against us.

We are not beasts, but the products of God’s love and within that love is found the kingdom.

We are not far from the saints, they are just on the other side of that thin place clearly felt even if it is unclear sometimes where they are, or that they are there at all.

We live for the praise of God’s glory; we know the hope he has for us, the hope to rise about the vitriolic beast, the ones to manifest finally a kingdom that is here on this earth for there is no veil that separates us from God’s love, experiencing God’s love, realizing God’s love.

Though perhaps we are to wait for a time, perhaps to long a time in human terms, before we are reunited with Christ and one another, we are never separated from God’s love.

The thinnest place between God’s love and us is but the realization of just how much we are loved.

6

That meadow did eventually fade into the morning, the warm sun turned into the daylight of a waking day.

And yet I know, or feel, or think I feel that somehow I saw my grandfather that one last time.

I missed him and I was able to say “see you later” and that made all the difference in a time of grief and upset.

I know that reason and rational thought might explain away such notions, but I am grateful for a moment of knowing through the uncertainty of dreams that I could a man I loved one last time that I loved him.

It was a rather realistic dream in the recesses of an overactive mind or it was me in a place where it became easy to realize the irrational, a thin place between life and death.

I am not sure I would know the difference.

I just know we are never far away from those who loved us and love us still in some form or another.

And I know just as well that we are never separate from God’s love.

On this day we give thanks for having had the chance to love those who are now dead and we give thanks to God for giving us those places where we can still feel their presence.

That presence is their love.

And love does not die.

Amen.