All Hallow's Eve

On this All Hallows Eve, I give you a reading or two to start the process of thinking about those saints who have touched our lives, to reflect that we are not alone on our journeys (both literal and of the spiritual nature).
Tomorrow (All Saint's Day) will contain another liturgy to celebrate the saints in our lives.

Blessed Be

Rev. Joel

The Larger Circle
~ Wendell Berry

We clasp the hands of those that go before us,
And the hands of those who come after us.
We enter the little circle of each other's arms
And the larger circle of lovers, who hands are joined in a dance,
And the larger circle of all creatures,
Passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance,
To a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it
Except in fragments.

They Are With Us Still
~ Kathleen McTigue

In the struggles we choose for ourselves, in the ways we move forward in our lives and bring our world forward with us,
It is right to remember the names of those who gave us strength in this choice of living. It is right to name the power of hard lives well-lived.
We share a history with those lives. We belong to the same motion.
They too were strengthened by what had gone before. They too were drawn on by the vision of what might come to be.
Those who lived before us, who struggled for justice and suffered injustice before us, have not melted into the dust, and have not disappeared.
They are with us still. The lives they lived hold us steady.
Their words remind us and call us back to ourselves. Their courage and love evoke our own.
We, the living, carry them with us: we are their voices, their hands and their hearts.
We take them with us, and with them choose the deeper path of living.
(Let us name those who lend strength in our lives.)