All Souls All Saints- 2005

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, October 30, 2005

Reading

“In Whom We Live and Move and Have our Being”

By Denise Levertov

Birds afloat in air’s current
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole globe of being.
It’s we who breathe; in, out, in
the sacred leaves astir.
Our wings rising, ruffled, but only the saints
take flight.
We cower in cliff-crevice or edge out gingerly
on branches close to the nest.
The wind marks the passage of holy ones riding
that ocean of air. Slowly their wake
reaches us, rocks us.
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.

What holds us, comforts and sustains us as we face death and grief? Are you aware of the presence of the saints, the spirit of those who have gone before?

Do you feel the wind marking the passage of holy ones riding the ocean of air…the air within which we live and move and have our being…the air that is God or the Divine…do you feel the wake of saints and dear departed…rocking you, rocking, rocking?

Think of a loved one who has died, feel their spirit in the air around you, feel the ocean of air move, feel the rocking of your soul.

Poet, Denise Levertov offers the image of enveloping air… encompassing, encompassing. She means us to understand that we are held. That we are encompassed by divine energy, by soul force, by the spirits of the saints.

Here, the day before Halloween, I guess I should make it clear that I don’t believe literally in flying saints, or ghosts, or haunting spirits. I do believe that spiritual wholeness requires us to embrace the fullness of life, the fullness of our being. I do confess to being an intuitive person with deep poetic sensibilities. So, I can appreciate the image of the saints surrounding us in spirit, creating a wake on the air…rocking me personally and encompassing all of us in a gentle ether.

Today I speak of All Souls, All Saints. Today I speak of death and its inevitability. Today I speak of a spiritual wholeness that asks us to edge out closer to the margin of life and death.

It is said that love never ends. It is said that love is stronger than death. It is love that we celebrate and honor this day. And death can be a path for love.

Today we remember those who have died. Today we celebrate ordinary saints whose lives have touched ours. Today we speak of souls departed and of our own.

We all have known loss. We all know that death is a teacher. It can take a lifetime to figure out the lesson.

This week, I reconnected with a young woman whose mother died almost three years ago…the daughter was just 25 years old, and the mother was not yet fifty. The mom knew she was dying. I remember the day I met her and her family. She was very sick, in hospice care at home, and her children were both full of fear and fearless as they cared for her. The youngest child was just ten years old, and there was no father present in the home.

The two older daughters, both in their twenties, agreed to be legal guardians for their younger sister. In a few weeks, I will officiate at the wedding of this young woman. And the younger sister will be there in the wedding party. They will all be missing their mom terribly, but they have stayed together as a family. The sister has been a stable parent figure. And her new husband, just over thirty himself, is comfortable becoming the father figure in the home.

For a time, this young woman considered going to seminary and becoming a UU minister. Now several years later, she’s not so sure of her path. When I asked her why she said, well, the only spiritual insight, I ever had was around my mother’s death and dying…around my grief. Is that enough?

Grief opens us up…sometimes searingly. Grief, like death itself, can be postponed, but not denied. It is something to which we must submit.

As we care for one another within this community of faith, none of us are spared, we live together through every loss. And we struggle together to integrate life and death.

We gather in celebration of lives well-lived, we light candles and hold vigils to warm our hearts and bodies.

Sometimes as your minister, I want to shield people from this pain, but the only way to be spared grief and sorrow, is never to have loved.

Life and death is a path, and love is at the beginning and love is what is left.

As poet, May Sarton writes, “Now the dead move through all of us, still glowing.”

This is the season when the earth lies fallow, we have come through harvest time, and now we move into a time of longer nights, a time of increasing darkness. Autumn color is the brillant harbinger of death. Religion, like life, must make some kind of peace with dying.

How do we as Unitarian Universalists make a place, a peace with death? How do we live with its presence?

Religion has always included rituals for passing through the dark time, invocations to the power of the saints, requiems for blessing and lifting the soul, prayers meant to connect the living and the dead, religion takes us to the depths to understand the meaning of existence.

In fact, death and dying bring a fullness to our lives. This may seem counter-intuitive…for death seems like emptiness and feels like loss, but it is also fulfillment of something. It is the natural, inevitable, culminating reality. This is something of what my young friend experienced after her mother’s death. Something more inside the emptiness.

Like the relentless descent of winter, the waning sun, the changing leaves, the fallow fields mark the natural, inevitable, reality of our year- there is meaning, even in endings.

We are given life. And it is taken. Fullness. In living and in dying. Those of us here to mark the inexorable truth are the living. The dead cannot speak of this truth. Yet it is only through the dead that we have any inkling of it. Through the images we carry of them. The tokens we cherish. The voices we hear. The startling reminders. The absent present.

I keep a symbol of this fullness of living and dying…it is my old, very old address book. It is full of names of friends and loved ones who have died. In some letters of the alphabet in my book, the dead outnumber the living. And whenever I go in search for a phone number…and I leaf through the living and the dead, I am reminded of all those I have loved. My husband thinks I should clean it out, get a new one, get rid of those out of date addresses, but something has kept me from it…some inclination to preserve and affirm the presence of those who are no longer with me…or are with me in spirit only.

All Souls Day, All Saints Day, All Hallowed Eve. This is the season to remember those who have died…to affirm the fullness of the cycle of life.

Each year at this time, I want to help us remember those who have died….members of this congregation, and members of our individual families and friends.

Let us speak the names of those members of this congregation who have died in the past year. Let us remember.

1. Romaine Estep
2. Barbara Albertson
3. Jean Bort
4. Bob Prestemon

In the silence, speak quietly the names of those loved ones you would remember today.

What are the meanings of All Saints Day, All Souls Day and All Hallowed Eve…- what are the traditions or sources from which they arise?

Present day neo-Pagan Uus adopting the Celtic custom, consider this time of the year… the time when the voices of the dead are clearest…for the veil between the worlds is thinnest at Samhain. (Sow-inn) This is the new year for them.

The Christians adopted many of these traditions moving their celebration of All Saints from May to November 1st. Originally All Saints day celebrated the martyrs to the faith. But its significance expanded to include the honoring of all people of faith who have died.

On All Souls Day , November 2nd, faithful Catholics, especially in Mexican culture, where it is called, “The Day of the Dead” celebrate a somber, yet playful day in which it is believed that spirits return to the earth. Children make a path to the home or the cemetery with marigold petals and families decorate graves and bring food and drink for the spirits. There are parades of the living dressed as the dead and masks reminding one and all of death’s presence.

Many native religions practice ritual honoring of the ancestors. The creating of altars with a photgraph and incense and foods and flowers are common in many cultures. American culture does not offer many ways to honor the ancestors or wise elders. I believe it is good, indeed necessary for a religious community to create rituals of remembrance and a way of honoring those who went before.

It is good that many more UU churches are creating memorial gardens and walls with the names of those members of the church who have died. It may surprise you to know that many Uus are also creating home altars- a place where they can put pictures of relatives who have died- often this is done on their birthdays…it is a good way for the children to learn about great grandparents, aunts and uncles.

In our family, my husband’s only sibling, a brother died when our children were very young. They never got to know him and they were curious. One year, we created a kind of in-home memorial service for your by-then teenage children. We had Ron’s photo’s , writings, awards, out on the table. WE lit a candle and Dave and I talked about his brother and what he was like and how he lived his life. Our children were very interested and very grateful.

I too have lost a brother. He was just 11 months older than me and we were very close. And there are days when I do feel him close on the wind. There are nights when I am rocked by the wake of his spirit.

I believe that the spirit of those who have died live on in us and in the air and earth and stars. I believe we are encompassed by life in all of its forms.

Unitarian Universalism speaks of the cloud of witnesses and of the Beloved Community….of All the Saints.

We who live have a responsibility to remember. To listen to the rustle in the trees and wonder. To sense a glow inside and recognize our ancestors. To speak the names and tell the stories.

And in these ways, we will live more fully. We will become more fully human. Death cannot be denied. We must all submit.

Together we edge out on the limb of the tree of life.
We edge out toward the unknown.
We edge out with fear and trembling.
We edge out toward the ocean of air that is the divine enveloping whole….
We breathe, in, out , in,
Our wings rise, ruffled….we’re not yet ready to take flight.
We are rocked, gently held, comforted…
We inhale, exhale, inhale…
Encompassed, encompassed.
Little by little we let ourselves fall into the air, We hold one another’s hand…we teach and learn from each other…
Little by little we allow ourselves to be carried by the wind.
This is spiritual deepening. This is trusting life.
This is surrendering to wholeness.

By our grief we are changed.
By our memories we are prepared.
By our living, living in full awareness of death…by our living, we are made new.

So My It Be/Amen