Yesterday was All Saints Day – a day set aside to remember saints who walked before us, to learn from their examples, and to be encouraged by the strength given them.

Today we gather, mourning their death, contemplating our own. The church alive with symbols of life and resurrection – stark in contrast to the black vestments of the priest.

Against warm wood paneling, a frame then a picture emerges. Shimmering candles – both flame and brass, warm sunlight pouring in through smoky windows, dancing off the polished furnishing and pure white fabric on the altar.

Flowers, still adorning, vibrant washes of deep blues, oranges, reds and violets amid the back drop of expected green clippings of life. Their stems, strong, soaking up water – providing life and substance to a fragile structure of leaves and petals.

The priest enters – shrouded in black vestments; the fabric textureless, stiff. Underneath the common white dress-like priestly garment – girded up with thin strips of black, designed to hold the vestment in place yet constraining him as tendrils of death. Although unseen in our own lives they linger around us each.

The paradox is heavy. I sit in this tension of life and death. The past behind me, fixed – no longer flowing – the future, not guaranteed. The only moment I have is before me, a saint in the making, living in the thin space where eternity touches my world.

I couldn’t believe what I was saying, to actually give voice to the awful things happening. The words drifted from my lips as if someone else was talking. They floated around me then mingled with the dry summer air. As I spoke I felt the vibrancy of life leave me –

I became heavy. My body slumped and I was unable to move. laying down on the ground I could feel the dry summer grass prickly underneath me. My body yearned to dry up and fade into the dirt – to simply disappear. The knots of anxiety – too much for my heart to hold had now dissipated into numbness – then deep heaviness.

This heaviness overtook me, as if my muscles refused to hold me upright. The ground beneath me, my only comfort. Sorrow pushing heavy down on me, no desire left in me to push back. I lay still on the flat hard surface of the Earth.

My body yearning for what it knows, the cold, dark clay of its origin.

“From Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.”

Yet in that heaviness a small spark of something in me whispered,

“Yes, but in glory you will rise from that dust to eternal life. Get up. This is not the end. Rejoice in your sorrow, rejoice. God is near to care for you and your girl.”

The promise of love, of salvation and resurrection call me and lingered.

Powerless and empty, another strength enlivened me, and I got up.