AllSaintsDayandSundayB, November 1,
2015, Sullivan Park Care Center, by Annette Fricke
Today, in
Christendom, is the Feast of All Saints proper.
This is not a moved feast, but the actual day. All Saints Day is always the day after
Halloween which has lost its original connection to All Saints. I have great memories of Halloween as a
child. My usual costume was to go as a
witch, something easily accomplished with my long dark hair; just rat it and
go. No use in spending time with
elaborate things. It was a time of
immediate excitement and eagerness to go out on the town, to each and every
door. I didn’t care about the candy,
although I did know kids who did. I had
one classmate who would put a costume on, trick or treat the entire town, then
change into another costume and do it again!
Not for me. The best part for me
was trick or treating at the town librarian’s house to savor her scrumptious
freshly baked cookies! Yum! It has a Celtic origin, in fact and was the
end of the Celtic year. The Celts
believed the souls of the dead roamed the streets and villages at night. Since
not all spirits were thought to be friendly, gifts and treats were left out to
pacify the evil and ensure next year’s crops would be plentiful. This custom
evolved into trick-or-treating.[1] Some
have depicted Halloween in modern times as the time when children take revenge
on their parents. In my day, soap on the
windows of businesses sometimes became wax.
Yes, children can become the embodiment of evil at times. Although it is no longer with its association
to a harvest festival, we now have a more and more American version of
Oktoberfest for that purpose. Observe
the juxtaposition of both evil and good and how the evil has been transformed
into a happy occasion that has nothing to do with evil unless our children are
the perpetrators. And it is not
necessarily a lack of teaching and molding on the part of parents and
grandparents as it is in the rebellion and differentiation of self from parent,
teachers and others in authority. I
submit to you that this thought process and behavior continues well into adult
hood, although likely perceived in a different way and performing a different
function. I know that my dad continued
to tease in the same manner as always, but no longer was aware of context. He needed the guidance of others to curb his
teasing which took on the quality of being too rough with the little
children. Walkers and wheelchairs can be
excellent forms of transportation, but also a means of either intentional or
unintentional hazards to others travelling in the same path. Our judgments of
right and wrong can become distorted to where we unknowingly do harm without
realizing it.
For those of
you watching the presidential nomination debates, there is one comment that
sticks out more than all the others and it was made by Donald Trump. He said something to the effect that he never
asks for forgiveness, just picks up where he left off and tries to do better. He does not apologize for any mistakes he
made in the past. That kind of statement
makes me wonder if he ever really thinks he made a mistake at all and how he
raised his children and what his relationship was like with his estranged wife
and current wife. Did he ask for
forgiveness for his affair while married to his first wife?
I suppose
that we can be on either side of the tangled mess of misguided behavior in our
quest for dignity, integrity, security in life.
Sometimes it makes us ugly people, while at others, we shine with the
brightest of the saints who now have passed from this life. One of the big items in the news today is the
story of a Maryland diocese bishop who texted on her phone while driving drunk,
hit and killed a man a year ago. She was
sentenced to seven years in prison. But
the rest of the story, as told by a friend of mine who posts a picture of Jesus
knocking at the door with a jack-o-lantern trick-or-treat container in his
hand, is that she hid her alcohol addiction from the church committee when she
was called to become bishop of the diocese. Yet despite this and a former
charge in 2010, she also managed to grow a church so well, that new facilities
had to be built to accommodate the parishioner increase. Many are left wondering, myself included just
how it is that such extreme opposites in behavior can reside in the same
person. Will she someday be named as a
saint of this church, or will the drunk driving charges and sentencing
overshadow the good that she did? Will
she receive treatment? Will she follow
it? Will she ask for help when she needs
it? Those of us ‘would be clergy’ types
are told from the very beginning of the process that we need a spiritual
director, at the very least as the case presented before us dictates. As much as the freshness of this case is in
the news and brings up strong emotions, this is the world in which we
live. We are not perfect human beings as
much as we might want to be and we do need the support of others on our
spiritual journeys.
The story I
just told you is true and she is no longer a priest; it remains very painful
for all involved on this almost one year anniversary. This situation is a witness for the entire
world to see. Many will see it and
declare that Christians are simply a bunch of “wishful hopefuls” living in a
fairy tale world who have fallen very short of their example in Jesus Christ,
their supreme leader. Those outside the church will wag their fingers at this
fallen bishop alongside the hatred displayed by the so-called Christian entity
known as the Westboro Baptist Church.
Some will say that she deserves punishment; but mostly she does not need
punishment for her crime as much as she really needs strong support in her
journey into treatment. In addition to
that, she needs to sense a genuine remorse for her part in causing unnecessary
pain for grieving family and friends of the man who died at her hand. The man’s
wife and children now have to face life without him.
Our strength
in all tragedy is remembering that God walks with us through our roughest
times, pulling us out of the mire that would hold us back and paint the canvas
of our souls with darkness and despair. God
chooses to dwell with us mortals in all times.
God longs to draw us ever closer into a place where all that threatens
to destroy our relationship with God will no longer be a factor in our thoughts,
belief and behavior. God promises that
belief in Jesus will enable us to see the glory of God, to see resurrection, to
see that with God, all things really are possible. God loves us just as intensely as illustrated
by Jesus’ love for Lazarus, which he fully demonstrated when Jesus, learning of
Lazarus’ death, ran to the aid of his family, cried and sat with them. God will
wipe away the tears from our eyes. Death
will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
