For I am convinced that death…will not be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:38,39

The veil between heaven and earth is quite thin today. If you listen closely enough the song of the saints who have gone before us sing in the company of angels here on earth. We light candles, we sing songs, and we count that who feels absent is indeed present with us and through us in the company of the Holy Spirit. Death cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We are born into God and we die into God. We remember people we loved who taught us about grace, who preservered until life’s final breath, who failed and whose failings we learn from.

All Saints Day is a day when we also proclaim our defiance in the strength of our faith. Death will not have the last word. We take comfort that on earth, and in heaven, we are part of the unity of the Christian Church. That Jesus Christ has claimed us as his own.

All Souls – May Sarton 

Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?
Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,
The cold bleak voices of the early morning
When all the birds are dumb in dark November—
Remember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,
Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak.
Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
“Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven.”

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited—
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.