On Sunday Nov 6th, we will celebrate All Saint’s Day in our church. The service will commemorate all our saints: our ancestors; people of faith who carried and passed on our faith stories on to us; and individuals who followed God’s call, both within Christianity and outside our tradition. It will include both un-named and everyday saints, as well as those who were formally bestowed sainthood.
In this service, we also will take time to acknowledge and lift up the particular Saints that are known to us, our loved ones who, in death, have moved into the nearer presence of God.
Death is not something we often acknowledge or talk about in our culture. We tend to keep it at a distance, avoiding bringing up the names of those who’ve passed on. But during our All Saint’s service we will hold sacred space to hear the names of loved ones spoken aloud, lighting candles as we do so. Together we will lift up their lives and remember their deaths.
Our All Saints Service will offer us Holy Space to honor the people we loved, and lost, and who still impact our lives today. The service will give us a chance to thank them for leading the way in faith and in life. It will give us a moment to, in community, celebrate the ways in which death both parts us and rejoins us in the great Cosmic whole. Our church community on this side of the veil will celebrate the communion of Saints on the other side of the veil, now joined with God.
I hope you will take a moment to send along the names of your loved ones, our Saints, so that we can give witness to them named in community, light a candle for them, and give thanks for their lives.
Let us celebrate together the communion of Saints.
