All Souls and All Saints
Matt Hyde
I’m one of those Christians who likes the idea of a liturgical calendar. There’s something about linking spiritual practice to the rhythms of the year that appeals to me, partly because of how that recognises God in the corners of life, but also because of its potential to re-enchant the world, days and seasons not just there because of how the Earth spins around the Sun but also as vehicles of grace and wonder and remembrance. We think about death and the otherworldly as leaves fall and colder nights draw in; we think about new life as the world around us blossoms.
In reality, though, I know I’m insulated from all this, cocooned in a house and an office and a car full of electricity and screens and thermostats. I’m not organised enough or disciplined enough to step outside of my brick bubbles, my calendar defined not by Lent or Advent, but by deadlines and days off, the rhythms of economists and academia, holidays not holy days.
I always feel like this around Allhallowtide. I suppose that’s because it’s a melancholy time of year and I’m a melancholy man at times, but maybe also because it’s a church season that, in the UK at least, gets buried under Bonfire Night and Halloween. Easter and Christmas are the two big gigs of the church year which makes it easy to get swept along in the wake of Whamageddon and chocolate eggs appearing on the shelves. All Saints and All Souls don’t have that cultural pull.
And yet there’s something resonant about remembering those who came before us in the faith. Traditionally, All Saints Day commemorates, well, all the saints – those who’ve been canonised and who adorn the names of churches and stained-glass windows. All Souls Day, meanwhile, remembers the remaining faithful departed, those who shaped our congregations, taught our Sunday Schools, cleaned the church toilets. Those who cared for us and loved us, those whose steadfastness in God radiated from their lives into the world around them, those whose struggles and flaws and circumstances made the life of faith a storm-tossed ship that was nevertheless buoyed by grace. We remember them as pull our coats around us as we walk towards winter, the nakedness of the trees mirroring our grief, perhaps, or sacred memories that light our paths and warm our hearts. We remember that they’re no longer here with us; we also remember that, somehow, they cheer us on. The Book of Hebrews talks about a great cloud of witnesses who surround us, and I’m always mindblown that this crowd contains not only, say, my grandparents, but also Mary and Joseph, St. Francis of Assisi and Julian of Norwich, Tolkien and Johnny Cash.
Hanging in the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels in LA is a series of tapestries by the artist John Nava. The tapestries portray 135 figures; look closely and there are some you might know – Mother Theresa, for instance, and that woman with the short hair is Joan of Arc. The gospel writers are there, obviously, as well as John the Baptist and Mary Magdelene, and a host of other figures from across church history. It’s a diverse crowd in terms of ethnicity and age, modern suits alongside ancient robes, but wait – there are people there who aren’t named. Most of these are kids, some of them teenagers, a baby. One wears shorts, another jeans, another a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. These aren’t saints, at least not formally, they aren’t bishops or Church Fathers. They’re the millions of Christians whose names never make the ecclesiastic history books, they’re those who quietly live their lives of faith in their own neighbourhoods, siblings in Christ who we wouldn’t recognise if we saw them on the bus but who nevertheless are part of our beautiful sprawling family in Christ.
And that reminds me that the Church is a found family – even when it contains those who are also family by blood or by law – adopted and grafted into each other’s lives and into the life of God. Maybe, as the nights close in, as we steel ourselves for the winters to come, we can gather around the family table, fire burning as we tell stories and recite our histories. As the stories weave around each other, we’ll find it’s a far messier and funnier and complicated process than we may have once thought, less sanitised and more sanctified that we were led to believe.
Maybe that’s the point we start to really hear those stories, truly listen to all we can learn: the wisdom earned from studying the scriptures, for instance, but also from being a carer. The trust and faith that grows out of prayers prayed when sleeping in doorways or approaching a border. The courage and the street smarts developed when, despite you being a Child of God, the world around wants to crush or dismiss you. What you learn about bravery and fear when you fall in battle or are cut down when fighting for peace. The things you know about strength when you’ve survived a lifetime of abuse. How faith and compassion survive imprisonment, whether that’s behind steel bars or the chains of our own thoughts. How to have hope when bombs are falling. How to weep. How to praise. How to love. How to rediscover joy, how to turn and recognise wonder at the summit of a brutal climb.
At a time of year when memories may help or haunt, when the veil between what is and what was feels thinner and we’re tempted by a fancy-dress masking of fragile identities and difficult truths, a date on a calendar can become a portal through which we may glimpse that cloud of witnesses. They cheer us as we run our marathon, our sprint, our relay, through a tickertape of falling leaves as One waits for us at the finish line, arms outstretched, the secret and true names of all his children tattooed on his hands.