Hallowed be all our names, the living and the dead

Today the 31st of October is All Hallows Eve or Hallo’ween, Halloween. Tomorrow is All Saints Day or All Hallows Day which is followed on the 2nd November by All Souls Day, a time in the Christian Calendar to remember all souls who have departed this life.

Like other Christian festivals, including Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, these three autumn days are a fascinating mixture of pre-Christian, Christian and even post-Christian tradition and mythos. I am fairly certain that the children going door at Halloween are probably not aware that they have created a modern day variant on the pre-Christian festival of Samhain; a festival that not only celebrated harvest, but was also a time to commune with the spirits of ancestors. There are similar traditions throughout most culture's, autumnal and winter festivals. Autumn is a time of reflection, a time to take stock before the harsh realities of winter come.

Halloween in the north of England is something that is marked, at least in a secular way, far more these days than I remember in my earlier childhood. When I was a child it was Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night that took on greater significance. I don’t really remember going “Trick or Treating”, until a significant film came out in 1982 and then everything seemed to change. The film was E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. One of the most commercially successful films of all time and one that changed something significantly, certainly in my life and perhaps the culture of the North of England. I recall, as many others did, that after this going door to door, trick or treating replaced the tradition of going “Door to Door” asking for “a penny for the guy” and of course “Mischievous Night”. It seems that these traditions all got swallowed up with “Trick or Treating”. “Mischievous Night”, at least in Yorkshire came on the 4th November and was linked to the “Gunpowder Plot” and “Fireworks Night” that is marked on the 5th of November. Things could get pretty wild on “Mischievous Night” and some, I’m sure, are glad to see that it has pretty much been lost to history. You do hear of little pockets of it in Liverpool and Leeds, but mainly it has gone the way of the Dodo and been replaced by “Trick or Treating”. There’s a part of me that wishes this wasn’t true. I remember the thrill of getting up to no good with friends and of hearing similar tales of other friends who were far more daring than I. I also remember my granddad telling me of things he and his mate Percy used to get up to. I remember the delight in this night of freedom that the children used to be granted. A freedom that I fear children of today do not enjoy.

November is Remembrance Season and really it begins today. Remember Samhain was about connecting with the ancestors, the lost souls. Our age and culture has in recent times become a little death defying and death denying, I feel. The last eighteen months or more have brought this more sharply into focus. We have had to face the fragility of life, our mortality and the realisation that everything that we seemingly depend on is finite, that it can be broken. That we are mortal and life is fragile, that impermanence truly is the nature of the game. Halloween, like the Mexican Day of the Dead is about fun and joy, but there is something serious beneath these ancient traditions that are played out in our modern sanitised culture.

By contrast as Mary Anne Brussat has highlighted “many of the great teachers from the religious traditions recommend that we face death and even befriend it. Saint Benedict tells us to keep death daily before our eyes. Medieval philosophers kept a skull on their desks to remind them of the impermanence of life. Rabbi Harold Kushner interprets poet Wallace Stevens' comment "Death is the mother of beauty" to mean that we cherish and find things beautiful precisely because we know they will not be around forever nor will we always be here to enjoy them. Death, in other words, brings meaning to life.”

We live in age where violence is often glorified in our culture, but in a way that makes it unreal. We see it on our screens, but we rarely experience it face to face. It is sanitised and we are detached from it. We glorify violence whilst at the same time deny the reality of death. In so doing we make life itself seem unreal. Not sacred or holy. We do not hallow one another, recognise the sacredness in life itself and thus existence becomes meaningless. Is it any wonder that a sense of despair is on the increase. If we take away the things which bring superficial meaning to our lives, what is left? Surely there is a better way?

Well I believe that the way is to sanctify life, to make everything holy, to hallow all our names. To recognise the sacredness of all souls, the living and the dead.

I like to get up very early on Sunday morning these days, ridiculously early actually. I am usually in Altrincham not long after 6am. I do a little exercise and then prepare myself for the day. I sanctify the day as I prepare to lead worship, two or three times. I like to arrive in Urmston no later than 8.30am even though the service doesn’t begin until 10am and no one else arrives before 9.30am. After opening and setting up I often take the short walk down Queens Road to the cemetery and walk round reading different headstones and contemplating the lives off those folk. People that touch so many other lives, people I never knew but who meant so much to others. I honour the dead which in some ways enables me to better serve the living. It helps me connect to the sacredness of life itself. There is nothing morbid in this activity. It enables me to connect the preciousness of the lives that have touched mine, but who are no longer with me. I say to myself hallowed be each of your names. It helps me recognise the sacredness of every soul. Not just on 2nd of November, but every day. For every day is a holy day, all ground is holy ground and each person is a holy one, from the core of their being. It helps me to recognise the sacredness of all life, for everything matters. Matter really matters you see. We are all holy and acceptable as we are, even the aspects of ourselves that we would prefer to hide, that we would prefer the world not to see, the things that bring us shame. They are all acceptable. If we hide them, or attempt to hide them, they will only appear in our shadow and cause damage. Mine do, I have seen evidence of this in the past year. Personal grief has brought aspects of myself to the surface once again, that I have not wanted to face, but in the end I have had to. We should never be ashamed of any aspect of ourselves, we are acceptable and loveable as we are exactly as we are in this moment.

I experienced a wonderful moment after last Sunday’s service in Altrincham. Two newer members asked me about sin, suggesting we are not all about it. That I don’t offer absolution for their short comings. I half jokingly said well how could I do such a thing. The truth is how could I. Who am I to think I can. Everyone falls short of their ideals, but no one, nothing is born wrong at their core, is rotten to core, or even selfish to the core. We are born whole and holy. That is why I say hallowed be all our names. That said we all fall short, we all get things wrong, all of us. The mistake is that we try to hide and en-shadowed these aspects of our humanity and this is where the problems come from, I have come to believe.

Perhaps the ancient tradition of Samhain will help us here, for I feel it is closest in connection to All Souls in its spirit. Perhaps here will find the true meaning of the next few days, perhaps the whole season of Remembrance. Here at this time we can truly remember the lost loved ones, at this time where the veil between the living and the dead is said to be most thin, we can re-feel these experiences as we touch and are touched by those who are no longer physically with us, but are still with us in our hearts, minds, spirits and souls. It might also be a time when we allow ourselves to be visited by the ghosts within ourselves, those aspects of our humanity that we try to keep hidden. The things that cause us pain and shame. We all have them, I do. They do not stay hidden for ever maybe we need to greet them like a long lost friend, maybe that is what Halloween and these other autumn festivals are actually about, they are there to allow us come to terms with our whole humanity and that of each other, maybe this is what the ancestors are trying to teach us after all.

I am going to end this devotion with a little bit of Wendell Berry “I go among trees”

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"

All Souls

Carl Seaburg wrote that  "All Souls Day is set apart for the commemoration of those `holy souls' who have graced our lives and passed from our living circle. Their radiance, their works, their memories, are still with us and on this day we meet to celebrate them fondly. And thoughtfully too, remembering that we also some day shall follow where they went.

Today the 2nd of November is the feast of All Souls. A time in the Christian Calendar to remember all souls who have departed this life. It follows All Hallows Eve or Halloween on the 31st of October and All Hallows or All Saints Day on 1st of November.

Like other Christian festivals, including Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, these three autumn days are a fascinating mixture of pre-Christian, Christian and even post-Christian tradition and mythos. I am fairly certain that the children going door at Halloween are probably not aware that they have created a modern day variant on the pre-Christian festival of Samhain; a festival that not only celebrated harvest, but was also a time to commune with spirits of ancestors. There are similar traditions throughout most culture's, autumnal and winter festivals. Autumn is a time of reflection, a time to take stock before the harsh realities of winter come.

All Souls has grown in meaning for me as the years have passed. This year I have lost my last grandparent and I also lost my first sibling, our Allen, I have also lost several dear friends too. I know I am not alone in my grief, although sometime it can feel this way. Perhaps the most painful loss of my life, thus far, occurred on All Souls Day 2006, when Ethan was killed. He was the soul that first reignited my life when the lights had gone out. He was the spark that rekindled the light in me…whenever I think of the following words by Albert Schweitzer it is his face I see and his soul I feel “ At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lit the flame within us”

Ethan’s beautiful soul helped me discover my own soul and to once again connect to the eternal and universal soul that holds all life.

May Sarton beautifully and I would say perfectly captured the meaning of "All Souls" in the following poem.

All Souls' by May Sarton

Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?
Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,

The cold bleak voices of the early morning 

When all the birds are dumb in dark November - 

Remember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,
Through the pale, sunlight once more gravely speak,
Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
"Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be unravelled, nor the gift ungiven"

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,

Mother and child, lover and lover mated,

Are wound and bound together and enflowing.

What has been plaited cannot be unplaited -

Only the strands grow richer with each loss

And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven, 

We who find shelter in the warmth within,

Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend

Our complex love, our mourning without end

I first came across the poem just a few weeks before the first anniversary of Ethan’s death. A tree was being planted in memory of him at his school and I had been asked to offer some words of prayer. I decided to offer May's poem. It is the lines below that really strike me deep in the core of my being, in the marrow of my soul.

Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
"Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven."

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited -
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel now new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.

Some things cannot be unravelled they are with us forever and nor should they be. The gift of love is priceless and once given is a part of our soul forever. It survives death. It can never be destroyed.

Now what happens to us after our physical lives have ended is impossible to say with certainty. I suppose that has to be a matter of faith. A conclusion for all of us to draw ourselves. One thing I feel safe in claiming though is that it cannot be any stranger than this life. While they say that death is the great mystery in many ways I think that life itself is an even greater one…this is why each day I sing the joy of living in all its mystery.

I have a deep affection for the writing of John O'Donohue. a soul no longer physically with us but who to this day touches so many lives. He caught the spirit of "All Souls" near perfectly in what follows...

"When the soul leaves the body, it is no longer under the burden and control of space and time. The soul is free; distance and separation hinder it no more. The dead are our nearest neighbors; they are all around us. Meister Eckhart was once asked, Where does the soul of a person go when the person dies? He said, no place. Where else would the soul be going? Where else is the eternal world? It can be nowhere other than here. We have falsely spatialized the eternal world. We have driven the eternal out into some kind of distant galaxy. Yet the eternal world does not seem to be a place but rather a different state of being. The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. This suggests that the dead are here with us, in the air that we are moving through all the time. The only difference between us and the dead is that they are now in an invisible form. You cannot see them with the human eye. But you can sense the presence of those you love who have died. With the refinement of your soul, you can sense them. You feel that they are near."

This speaks deeply to me and brings to mind the following poem “To Music” by Rainer Maria Rilke,

Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: silence of paintings.
You language where all language ends.
You time standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.

Feelings for whom? O you the transformation
of feelings into what? –: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heart-space
grown out of us. The deepest space in us,
which, rising above us, forces its way out,–
holy departure: when the innermost point in us stands
outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other
side of the air: pure, boundless, no longer habitable.

“…as the other side of the air…” Really hits that place deep in the marrow of my soul.

When I think of those we have loved but who are no longer physically with us it seems to me that they have not gone elsewhere but are still bound up with us, their love is tied up in our hearts and souls in a different way and they inhabit that other place at “other side of the air”…but we can know and feel their presence when we remember them, especially when we gather together with others who remember them too. In moments such as these their souls touch our souls once again. “What has been plaited, cannot be unplaited”. We can sometimes feel their presence…The more sensitive souls amongst perhaps more so.

Those we have loved and lost live on in our dreams and memories. Such memories do indeed makes kings and queens of us. Their souls are woven into our souls, they impact on our daily actions and our waking thoughts and feelings. The love that we shared never dies. Yes their death changes our relationship with them, but the love we shared lives on. The love has created a bond that cannot be broken “what has been plaited cannot be un-plaited”. This love is an eternal force that cannot be taken from us. Its influence will continue to impact upon us until our dying day and even beyond as it impacts on the lives that we touch, lives which our loved ones will never have physically known. We are all bound together in a rich tapestry of love. Those who came before us, those whose lives touch us and whose lives we touch and those who live beyond our time and space live on. This love is eternal it never dies.

Today we remember all the souls who have touched our souls and who have shown us the way, who have revealed the love that is God. Let us also think of the lives that have been touched by these souls who they never physically knew.

Let us remember let us offer thanks and praise for those souls who are no longer physically with us but whose love will never leave us. "Love I swear it, is immortal."

"...the ghosts are part of us..."

I'm going to end this little blogspot with another piece from a writer who has inspired me and countless others greatly. A beautiful soul who is no longer Physically with us. It is titled "Meditation on All Souls" by Elizabeth Tarbox

"Who are my people, where are you who birthed me to play in summer's circle? I think I see you out of the corner of my eye, gone before I can look again, working, talking, engaged, and alive.

My ancestors are all about me in the ragged edges of memory, like partially developed film; the details are sketchy now. No princes and ladies among them, but scullery maids and journeymen. I know their faces, but not their voices, not the way their clothes smell, not the soft hands warm and red from a day of washing sheets. did they smile at me? Did they notice the little gifts I bought? I don't remember.

Bits and pieces of my people remain in memory's attic, hardly enough to make a tribe. forebears in small brick cottages with sooty chimneys and outdoor toilets. Women with wrap-around aprons and men with cloth caps. Brown teapots and doilies and unheated bedrooms. My grandmother's slippers, my mother's bone-handled hairbrush. Just memories, without the power to haunt.

So I seek a new tribe, other meanings. the little girl at the shelter shows me a toy, her creased fingers cannot yet turn a key, but there is still strength in her hand as it touches mine. Though she doesn't know my name, she would come with me if I would make her toy work and protect her from a world that has roughed her skin, bruised her heart, and given her only broken toys. She is a needy child; therefore is she not my child?

The old man who hardly knows me says he loves me because I bring him a bowl of food and sit there while he eats it. He is a hungry old man; therefore is he not my father?

At home I listen to a tape of sacred music and I weep in my chair and I cannot say if I weep for the child in the shelter or for the child I used to be. The spirits have no power to haunt , I claim, so why do I weep in nostalgia and regret my forgetfulness?

I look at the faces around a meeting table, across the sanctuary, in the candlelight of a meditation group, and I think, these are my people now, we belong to each other, I pour out my soul in trust to a new tribe. These are my people, who touch my hands, who invite me to come along, who make room for me to sit in the shadow of the candlelight and listen to their songs."

All Souls: Love I swear it, is immortal

      All Souls by May Sarton

Did someone say that there would be an end,

An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?

Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,

The cold bleak voices of the early morning

When all the birds are dumb in dark November -

Remember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!

Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,

Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak,

Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:

"Dear child, what has been once so interwoven

Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven."

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,

Mother and child, lover and lover mated,

Are wound and bound together and enflowing.

What has been plaited cannot be unplaited -

Only the strands grow richer with each loss

And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.

When all the birds have flown to some real haven,

We who find shelter in the warmth within,

Listen, and feel now new-cherished, new-forgiven,

As the lost human voices speak through us and blend

Our complex love, our mourning without end. 

Tomorrow the 2^nd of November is the feast of All Souls. A time in the Christian Calendar to remember all souls who have departed this life. It follows All Hallows Eve or Halloween  on the 31^st of October and All Hallows or All Saints Day on 1^st of November. This time of year is a time of reflection; a time to remember.

Like other Christian festivals, including Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, these three autumn days are a fascinating mixture of pre-Christian, Christian and even post-Christian tradition and mythos.  I am fairly certain that the children going door at Halloween are probably not aware that they have created a modern day variant on the pre-Christian festival of Samhain; a festival that not only celebrated harvest, but was also a time to commune with spirits of ancestors. There are similar traditions throughout most culture's, autumnal and winter festivals. Autumn is a time of reflection, a time to take stock before the harsh realities of winter come.

I will be conducting an All Soul’s service at Dunham Road tomorrow evening. I have invited anyone who wishes to come and join me to remember those souls who have touched their souls but who are no longer physically with them. It will be a time and space to light a candle and to offer a few words. Or if people prefer it will be a time to sit quietly, silently and reverently and to just remember.

All Souls Day speaks powerfully to my own soul. This is because of what happened on November 2^nd 2006. Before this day I am not sure that All Souls held any significance for me. This was the day when I lost a soul dear to me and to the lives of so many others. Ethan the little boy who had taught me about my own soul and who had enabled me to not only find my soul but to connect to the universal soul that I know as God today.

I first came across May Sarton’s poem “All Soul’s” a few weeks before the first anniversary of Ethan’s death. They were planting a tree in memory of him at his school and I had been asked to offer some words of prayer. This was a time before I had begun ministry training, although I was conducting worship. I decided to offer those words above by May Sarton as I felt that they spoke perfectly of the time and place. It is the lines that follow that sink so deep into my soul.

Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
"Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven."

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited -
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel now new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.

Some things cannot be unravelled they are with you forever and nor should they be. The gift of love is priceless and once given is a part of our soul forever. It survives death.

Now please do not get me wrong I am not suggesting that I know what happens to us after we die. While I have a belief in God, born from experience, I remain fairly agnostic when it comes to what happens to us after we die. I have no knowledge, gained from experience, of this. Therefore I do not know. That said I do know that love survives death, as I experience the love of those who have been in my life many years after they have gone.

When I say I am agnostic about the afterlife I am not implying that I am agnostic about God in this present life. I personally feel God’s presence powerfully, most of the time. As I often say “God is just there” Please do not get me wrong when I say I am agnostic about the afterlife I am merely acknowledging  the fact that I know little or nothing of what happens to us after our bodies die. I suspect that we move onto to another state of being and I am fairly certain that it can be no stranger than our current one.

While I do not know where the souls of those who have departed our time and space exist I do know where we can experience them. They can be felt and known every time we talk of and or remember them, especially when we gather together with others who remember them too. In moments such as these their souls touch our souls once again. “What has been plaited, cannot be unplaited”. The more sensitive souls amongst us talk of actually feeling their presence.

Those we have loved and lost live on in our dreams and memories. Such memories do indeed makes kings and queens of us. Their souls are woven into our souls, they impact on our daily actions and our waking thoughts and feelings. The love that we shared never dies. Yes their death changes our relationship with them, but the love we shared lives on. The love has created a bond that cannot be broken “what has been plaited cannot be un-plaited”. This love is an eternal force that cannot be taken from us. Its influence will continue to impact upon us until our dying day and even beyond as it impacts on the lives that we touch, lives which our loved ones will never have physically known. We are all bound together in a rich tapestry of love. Those who came before us, those whose lives touch us and whose lives we touch and those who live beyond our time and space live on. This love is eternal it never dies.

Forrest Church said:

“Whatever happens to us after we die, life doesn’t end in oblivion. It continues in love, our own love, once given, everlasting. After death our bodies may be resurrected. Our Souls may transmigrate or become part of the heavenly pleroma. We may join our loved ones in Heaven. Or we may return the constituent parts of our being to the earth from which it came and rest in eternal peace. About life after death, no-one knows.

But about love after death, we surely know. The one thing that can never be taken from this world, even by death, is the love we have given before we die. Love I swear it, is immortal”

Tomorrow I will remember all the souls who have touched my soul and who have shown to me the way, who have revealed the love that is God to me. I will also think of the lives that have been touched by these souls who they never physically knew. I will not be doing so alone. I will be sharing this time and space with others who will be remembering and offering thanks and praise for those souls who are no longer physically with them but whose love will never leave them. "Love I swear it, is immortal."

Autumn

Ministry compels me to pay attention. Even during those moments when I really do not want to, this work compels me to pay attention. I now understand that this is one of the great gifts of my work. Ministry compels me not only to pay attention to the people that I serve, but to all life. I now understand how much ministry is a deeply spiritual practice. Why is this? Well because it increases my sensitivity to life.

As the year has developed and as I have created worship and engaged with the communities I serve I have noticed how I increasingly pay attention to the changing seasons. This seems especially so this autumn. Autumn has had a powerful impact on me this time around. This year I seem to have noticed nature more than I ever have before; this year I have heard Autumn’s song more clearly than ever before. I am listening and I am attempting to harmonise with it.

I've been singing these words for weeks now...

“Think of the springtime,

Think of the summer,

Think of the winter,

Soon to be here,

But this is autumn,

Glorious autumn,

Beautiful autumn,

Best of the year.

Beautiful autumn best of the year...

Rilke wrote of “Autumn”

“The leaves are falling, falling as from far, as though above were withering farthest gardens; they fall with a denying attitude.

And by night, down into solitude, the heavy earth falls far from every star.

We are all falling. This hand’s falling too – and have this falling-sickness none withstands.

And yet there’s One whose gently-holding hands This universal falling can’t fall through.”

Everything seems to be falling and dying during the Autumn; "everything is beautiful because everything is dying". This is of course only temporary as all that is seemingly dying today is actually preparing itself for the renewal that will come in the spring time. 

It is hard to miss the glories of Autumn. Those simple falling and fallen leaves turn the most beautiful shades and from a distance can appear to be aflame in a red gold splendour. I noticed them as I was driving back to Altrincham only the other day.

Harvest feasts are celebrated, in many cultures, during the autumn. 

The other day a member of the congregation was telling me of her recent visit to a Sukkot celebration. Sukkot is a Jewish celebration where temporary shelters, with a hole revealing the sky are created in remembrance of ancestors who wandered in the wilderness; as the hardships of ancient times are remembered, so too a celebration is enjoyed and a thanksgiving harvest is shared by family, friends and guests. The shelters are decorated lavishly and are adorned with symbols of home, harvest and perhaps most importantly hope. By spending time outdoors, in these simple shelters, the Jewish people are reminded of their connection both to nature and their heritage.

In the coming weeks Hindu’s will be celebrating “Divali” the festival of lights. This is in essence a celebration of harvest and thanks giving when thanks are offered to the Divine for the blessings of nature. The festival honours the sacredness of light as a symbol of connection to the Divine. Prayers of petition are offered to the “Goddess of Abundance” “Lakshmi” to fill their homes with all that is beautiful and good, during the celebrations. This though is not merely a time to ask for gifts but also a time to offer generosity to family and friends. It is a time of celebration, a time for giving and forgetting and it is also a time of remembrance too; a time to recall deliverance of ancestors by the Avatar Krishna from a tyrant. Divali is a celebration, a time of thanks giving, not only for the harvest, but also of deliverance.

At this time of year many Pagans celebrate Samhain, a new year harvest. Samhain also represents the time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest. It is a time to remember those who have died, to remember and connect to ancestors and to prepare for the harsh realities of the coming winter; a time when the ground will once again become lifeless, only to be reborn again in the springtime.

The Christian churches have recently celebrated their own harvest festivals. We had ours here at Dunham Road, only two weeks ago. The coming weeks are also a time of remembrance with All Hallows, All Saints and All Souls Day, as well as Remembrance Sunday itself. December brings Advent and the Hope that comes with the new light, the Hope of Christmas and that humble birth in a simple stable. Like many of the other traditions this is also a time for giving and for getting (forgiving and forgetting).

Each of these very different traditions honours the past and gives thanks for the present while preparing for the hope that is to come, looking for the light in the darkness of winter and the coming of new life in the spring time.

Anyone who knows me will be aware that I have a deep love for the writings of Forrest Church. Forrest served for more than thirty years as minister at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York. He authored many books and I particularly love his writings post the year 2,000. With the dawning of the new millennium he changed and developed a more relational heart based theology as opposed to his previous head based one. As he said himself “My heart had always been in play – how could it not with love and death my abiding theme – but now a trunk line opened from my mind straight to my heart, a line that was almost always open. My long standing belief in a distant God slowly transfigured itself into my felt experience of a loving God. Ah, what a difference: to feel, not merely know, what one believes.”

His penultimate masterpiece “Love and Death”, which he wrote while dying of oesophagul cancer, is the most beautiful life affirming book imaginable. It extols the virtue of the power love in the face of death. Church does not bemoan his fate of dying before he himself is ready, instead he celebrates love. He says that death is in fact loves measure...

“...not only because at a loved one’s death our grief, however we express it, is equal to our love, but also because, when we ourselves die, the love we have given to others during our own brief span of days is the one thing death can’t kill. Because we and our loved ones manage to devise so many ways for fear to bind our hearts – fear of intimacy, fear of disappointment, fear of embarrassment, fear of confrontation – because our fear of pain or possible pain manifest itself in so many guises, we often hurt each other without really meaning to. We hurt one another and ourselves by learning, over the practice of a lifetime, how to protect ourselves from pain. Add to this all the mistakes we make, and all the mistakes others make, and only one solvent can loosen our hearts from self protective captivity. Only love. And only a forgiving heart, one capable both of accepting and bestowing forgiveness, is open both to give and receive the saving power of love. (Love and Death pg74)

This to me is a message of hope, a message of love and a message that connects all of us to one another.  It speaks to me powerfully of Autumn of that which is dying, so that it can be born again, so that it can bring about renewal. It symbolises the light of hope, the light of love that is to come only following the death that Autumn symbolises. 

"Autumn, glorious Autumn, beautiful Autumn, best of the year."

"This is indeed Autumn, glorious Autumn, beautiful Autumn, best of the year." Everything is indeed beautiful, because everything is dying. We are about to enter a season of remembrance for those who have gone before us. We have already gathered in the fruits of year. We have given thanks for the circling year as well as given thanks for our ancestors who made this life that we enjoy possible. Autumn links the past with the present as well as the future yet to come. A hope filled future, a dawning of new light, which symbolises the love which will always survive death.

"This is Autumn, glorious Autumn, beautiful Autumn best of the year." Autumn may well feel like an ending, but really it is a new beginning. We should not fall for the fool’s gold of death with the first of the winter frosts or the falling of the leaves. Those falling leaves are the first sign of the renewal that is yet to come. They should remind us of our ancestors that lived before us as well as those who will follow us when we are gone. Yes winter will soon be upon us, but there is new light, there is hope yet to come. New life will soon be upon us with the dawning of the spring yet to come.

"For this is Autumn, glorious Autumn, beautiful Autumn best of the year."

Amen