Friday, October 27, 2017
" SAINTS ALIVE !! "
PLEASE NOTE
Usually a new posting goes up here
. on Friday Mornings.
Next week the posing will not go up on
Friday, November 3, 2017.
The next posting here will go up on
Sunday afternoon,
November 5, 2017
Thank You!!
And now, on to this posting!!
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Hi There !
So, what are you going to be for Halloween this year?
Remember all he different costumes you wore as a kid
"Trick or Treating" around your neighborhood?
And how about when you got home with enough candy
to flip the entire NFL into insulin shock?
A note here for those of us who live in lands beyond the USA.
Halloween has become so popular in the states
that it ranks second only to Christmas.
Even beats out Mother's day!!
Over the years,
like Christmas and Easter,
Halloween has been captured and repurposed
commercially and socially.
From a holyday eve,
it has morphed into something between
the macabre and ghoulish.
Guess it has become a socially acceptable way
to let surface and act out
all sorts of spooky stuff
that is usually confined to our psychic sub strata,
and have some fun in the process,
to say nothing of the candy to be had!!
In its origin and purity
Halloween was a festive celebration of
ordinary people, living ordinary lives
and coming to extraordinary holiness
right out on the street of everyday living.
Back in Medieval Europe,
November first was a holyday,
All Saints Day.
People dressed in the garb ( costume )
of their life work:
homemaker, farmer, professor, midwife,
black smith, baker, doctor, potter and so forth.
This reminded all that their holiness
would be lived out right where and as they were.
There would be a High Mass in the cathedral
and then a joyous procession through town
celebrating that all are called to be saints,
whatever their life and place in society.
Thus "All" Saints Day.
There was music and food aplenty.
The next day was yet another holyday.
Again there was a High Mass in the cathedral
followed by a procession, this time to the cemetery,
there to remember all the holy souls
who helped them walk the way of holiness.
Thus "All Souls Day."
Both holydays underscored
the spirituality of ordinary people,
and their call to wholeness,
to holiness,
to be "hallowed,"
as the Old English put it.
Over time the Eve before All Hallows
became Hallow Eve,
later Halloween.
Way back when and right now,
too many people assume "holiness"
is just for spiritual superstars -
Augustine, John Wesley, Mother Theresa,
and happily legions more.
For us rather regular, ordinary people, though,
All Saints Day and All Souls Day
affirm the call of us all
to fullness,
to wholeness,
to holiness,
to be saints.
As a matter of fact
the word "saint"
derives from the Latin "sanctus,"
which means sacred,
full, whole, and thus "holy."
In the Christian Blessing,
we hear Jesus offer
fullness, wholeness, holiness:
"I have come that you might have life
and have it to the full."
John 10:10
Jesus offers himself as the way to fullness:
I am the way, the truth and the life."
John 14:6
The "way"
He can be our "way"
to navigate everyday life to wholeness.
The "truth"
He can be the "truth,"
the reality undergirding who we are
and how we are
as we come to wholeness.
The "life"
He can be the very "life"
that energizes, "en-livens" us
as we come more and more to wholeness in him.
We can live fully in union with Jesus,
he in us and we in him.
His life happening in and through us:
"Abide in me as I abide in you...
my Father is glorified by this
that you bear much fruit..
As the Father has loved me,
so I have loved you; abide in my love...
I have said these things to you
so that my joy may be in you,
and your joy may be full,"
John 15: 4 & 8, 9 & 11
Union, shared life , fullness. wholeness, holiness, saints all
in ordinary, everyday life.
All Saints
All Souls.
Now most of us "saints" aren't going
- to write profound spiritual treatises
(certainly not here anyway!!)
- die at the stake for our faith
- found religious orders or movements
- or walk on water.
Our life of wholeness will be a "garden variety," rather ordinary and practical.
It will be in the spirit and way Paul encourages:
"So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do,
do it for the glory of God."
1 Corinthians 10:31
Our "doing" will happen in all sorts of ways:
- changing a flat on the way to the airport
- being in labor for sixteen house
- being soul soaked in scripture
- going to a job that qualifies you as a Job
- making love like it's the Fourth of July,
and other times when it's more like a firecracker that didn"t
- living with fearful ambiguity about governments and economies
- quieting down into our Still Point
- teaching a little girl to swim
- struggling to break free of an addiction to
alcohol, drugs, porn, work
- being part of a religious/spiritual group
that rocks and rolls,
rocks to heaven some days,
and then other days,
rolls down to hellish disappointment
- lending a friend fifty dollars
and knowing you'll never see it again
- taking your mother/father-in-law with you on vacation
- reading a great book
- sticking your neck out for racial and environmental rightness
- having a brew with a good friend
(who never asks for fifty dollars
and is eager to pick up the tab for the brew !)
- washing the car
and all such everyday modes as God's Life surges through us
filling us unto wholeness.
It's a joy to celebrate that kind of holiness, truly an "All Saints Day."
It's also such a boost to call to mind and heart those good souls who nurtured and nudged us
along the street of everyday living to "whole-ly-ness," to again and again be guided by their
witness and influence - truly an "All Souls Day."
So, what are you going to be for Halloween this year?
How about:
- being refreshed and recommitted as the "saint" you are invited to be?
- being grateful "For All the Saints Who From Their Labors Rest"
and vigorously drawing from the endowment of their influence?
Our little circle of sharing here is blessed to welcome new members from Belarus and Ireland.
So good to be with you.
Thanks for the gift of you.
Have a wonder filled week one and all.
See you a tad later than usual next time with our next posting on Sunday, November 5, 2017.
I am most grateful to you for making our sharing here a
Communion of Saints!!
You certainly are
" Saints Alive !!"
Holding you all in
God's Dear Love,
John Frank
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MEDITATION MARKERS
" The challenge of the saints of the twenty-first century
is to begin again to comprehend the sacred
in the ten thousand things of this world;
to reverence what we have come to view as ordinary and devoid of spirit."
Edward Hayes in Secular Sanctity
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"All of the places of our lives are sanctuaries;
some of them just happen to have steeples.
And all the people in our lives are saints;
it is just that some of them have day jobs."
Robert Benson
Between the Dream and the Coming True
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FRANCIS OF ASSISI
- " I have been all things unholy.
If God can work through me,
He can work through anyone."
- "Start doing what's necessary;
then do what is possible;
suddenly you will be doing the impossible."
- "It's no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is preaching."
- " To Saints, their very slumber is prayer."
- "Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."
,
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