Wednesday, November 2, 2022
The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
All Souls Day
Day of the Dead (day two)
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
One more humble link
Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.
Jesus is generous with his Father’s love. When he tells me, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus knows how deeply I am loved by my Source. I came from God and will return to God, and in the meantime I am loved on all days, in all ways.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You make me lie down in green pastures, you lead me beside still waters, you still my soul.
Walking in the deep woods my steps fade into silence on the leaf bed. Leaves that have fallen over months or years, they cushion everything that touches them. I can lie down in those leaves, and look up. I can see where I came from, and where I’m going.
I hugged an enormous tree,
a really enormous tree,
more enormous than you would think,
and I’m not sure it noticed
little me …
begging attention like a toddler clinging to her mother’s leg,
and was it really the point that the tree would notice …
my touch,
my breath,
my presence?
My presence there was fleeting,
a blink in the life of that tree
as old as Jesus.
So small,
so very transitory,
so insignificant and powerless,
I love you tree, I do.
Thank you for putting me in my place.
Yes, it was that place,
the forest,
where God seeped out,
not in the enormous tree,
not just there,
not just in the earth,
not just in the smells of dry wood and dust
and the occasional pine needle.
No, God was in the fabric.
God was the fabric of the forest.
Timeless energy,
in the living,
and in the dying and decay,
in the air and the earth,
ineffable yet present,
unchangeable in the midst of the
unceasing life cycle of the forest,
and I was there too.
Did you feel me, God?
Did you notice me there, if only for a moment?
And does it change anything if You did? – Clarence Heller
And God says, “YES!” I notice you, and it changes everything. I noticed your grandfather and your grandmother too. And that changed everything. I noticed your aunt, your father and your mother and it changed everything. I love them all today as I did the days that they were born.
Pray for them, David, as they pray for you.
You guide us along paths of righteousness for your name’s sake. You prepare a table for us in the presence of our Enemy. You anoint our heads with oil, and our cup overflows.
I cry out, ashamed of my sin. My fault, my grievous fault! “Mea culpa!” And God cries back at me. No, not your culpa, but your cup! “Your cup, take your cup, it’s overflowing! Drink from it.” I drink then, and I am happy.
Wikipedia remarks that Day of the Dead in Mexico is less solemn than All Saints Day. It’s more of a party, a “joyful celebration” that might even include the giving of candy sugar skulls to friends and family. But any commemoration like his celebrates the eternal “communion of the saints,” which was as Richard Rohr points out, a late addition to the Apostles’ Creed.
 Within this worldview, we are saved not by being privately perfect, but by being “part of the body,” humble links in the great chain of history.
In Guardians of Being, penned by Patrick McDonnell and Eckhart Tolle, McDonnell’s cartoon Mutts human character pets the dog on his head. “Pat, pat, pat.” The dog looks at the cat, and pets her on the head. The cat looks at the bird, and the cat pets the bird. The bird looks at the worm, and pets the worm. The worm turns to his friend, another worm, and says, “The world has changed.”
Or maybe it has returned to its original blessing.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
(Wisdom 3, Psalm 23, Romans 6, Matthew 25, John 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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