Time to Get Ready for All Saints Day

Many hands have gone before

All Saints Day is November 1st but many churches will celebrate on Sunday November 3rd. Remembering those who impact our lives, those who have gone before and those who are still with us is an important part of our faith.

The Episcopal Church website explains:

We step aside from the flow of the propers and celebrate all the saints. We stop. We notice, We are surrounded by a flock of witnesses in our midst – many who have gone before us, some we are just now releasing, and still more with a full life ahead of them.

I love the Anglican tradition of renewing our baptismal vows on this day. Reminding ourselves of the journey we have taken personally is a good place to start in remembering the saints of God. In this tradition, all baptized Christians, living and dead known and unknown are considered saints of God. This means everyone including ourselves.

So as you get ready for All Saints Day think about your own faith journey. Remember the faithfulness of God in your past. Notice the movement of God in the present. Think about your hopes and dreams for the future. Get ready to celebrate all that you are as a saint of God.

But don’t stop there. This is a special day for celebrating. Here are some suggestions:

St Aidan’s Episcopal church on Camano Island where we worshipped yesterday is planning a special “remembering” table that will be set up in the nave. The congregation is invited to bring photos or small memorabilia of dear ones who have gone before us and place them on the table. During the worship on All Saint’s Day there will be a special blessing of the photos and memories.

Hold an All Saints’ Day party – a great alternative to Halloween. Get everyone to dress as their favourite saint, or to bring a picture of this saint. During the festivities get everyone to share a story about their saint and the impact he or she has had on their lives. Or you might like to get participants to guess who each person represents.

Plan a family heritage party. Invite people to do some work beforehand researching their family history and particularly the Christian saints who were a part of it.  Ask them to bring photos and stories to share.  Finish with a time of prayer for all those that have gone before us.

Several years ago when my youngest brother went to Greece where my father comes from he found out that it is possible that our family name Aroney comes from the name Aaron and that our family probably originated in Jerusalem many centuries ago.  It is probable that one of the reason they began the journey out of Jerusalem first to Constantinople then to Rhodes and finally to the tiny island of Kithera at the bottom of the Peloponnese mountains is because they became Christians.  There are a number of Greek orthodox priests in my father’s family history and my Aunt Mary was a very devout Greek Orthodox Christian.   I know less about my mother’s family history but would love to find out where her family too has had profound encounters with God.

Plan an All Saints Day pilgrimage. Again this might require some before time research.  Explore the Christian heritage of your community.  Where did the first Christians come from?  How did they interact with the native peoples?  Where was the first church established?  Who were some of the early Christians who impacted your community.  Plan a pilgrimage walk to the site of the first Christian community and if possible have a time of prayer and possibly even a eucharistic celebration to remember those who have gone before.

What are your ideas for celebrating All Saints Day this year? It is a great alternative to Halloween and we would love to hear what you are doing.

Here are some other posts I have written on All Saints Day that you might enjoy.

Coming Home for All Saints Day

Freeing the Saints from Their Hallmark Holidays

Surrounded by Prophetic Voices – Clouds of Witnesses that Call Us Out of Numbness

A Prayer for All Saints Eve

 

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Going Green for Halloween – Seven Tips to Consider

Halloween lantern

This morning I was reading through Green America and came across an interesting article on Halloween. Now I am not an advocate for Halloween. It always seems weird to me that Christians celebrate it as much as non Christians. But here in America it is such a part of the culture that this rarely seems to be questioned. And I certainly know it is coming because the number of horror movies on T.V. has increased astronomically. So instead I thought that I would turn my thoughts to preparations for the season.

First some thoughts from the Green America article and elsewhere you may want to consider:

1. Face paint: A 2009 study by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found that 10 out of 10 children’s face paints tested contained at least trace levels of lead. This article provides some DIY alternatives.
2. The Candy Problem: 41 million kids in the U.S. go trick or treating. Last year Americans spent something like 2.2 billion on Halloween candy. No wonder one out of three children in America are overweight and many will develop diabetes. Consider making your own healthy treats, giving out non food items like polished stones, temporary tattoos, or friendship bracelets.
3. Swap costumes: Millions of costumes are purchased in the U.S. each year. Consider holding a pre Halloween party to swap, mend, make or borrow costumes from your friends.
4. Reverse Trick or Treating: I wrote about this a couple of years ago in this article. My growing concern for just working conditions for children makes me a strong advocate for this. I think it is a wonderful way to raise awareness of these issues and show consistency for our values.
5. Hold an All Saints Party. Rather than celebrating Halloween celebrate All Saints Day November 1st. Have kids dress up as their favourite person or saint. Share stories, decorate pumpkins if you must but also consider some alternatives like decorating window panes with non toxic paints, making Christmas decorations and wreaths.
6. Organize a Community or Neighbourhood Event. Green Halloween started in Seattle but grew into a national phenomenon with community events at more than 50 locations. You might want to join in the fun and get to know some of your neighbours.
7. Make the most of you pumpkins: Kids and adults alike love carving and decorating pumpkins, but I hate to watch them slowly rotting on the porch. So here are some thoughts to use that pumpkin more effectively. Save the seeds and toast them in the oven with a little salt. Use the pumpkin flesh (discarding any melted wax) to make pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread.

A Tribute to Those Who Have Gone Before

The saints are coming - clouds of witnesses that have gone before

Halloween is coming and in the glare of its monster shrouded festivities it is easy to forget that the real purpose of the season, from a Christian perspective is to celebrate the lives of the saints who have gone before us. All Saints’s day is a wonderful time to spend time reflecting on the clouds of witnesses who have gone before so seemed like an appropriate time to post my favourite prayer and you tube video.

The prayer I originally came across in a little book entitled Celtic Fire, a delightful collection of stories and prayers that I would heartily recommend to you. I often use it at the end of a seminar as a going forth prayer, though it was originally written as a morning prayer.

Let us go forth

In the goodness of our merciful father

In the gentleness of our brother Jesus,

In the radiance of his Holy Spirit

In the faith of the apostles,

In the joy praise of the angels,

In the holiness of the saints,

In the courage of the martyrs.

Let us go forth

In the wisdom of our all-seeing Father

In the patience of our all-loving brother,

In the truth of the all-knowing Spirit,

In the learning of the apostles,

In the gracious guidance of the angels,

In the patience of the saints,

In the self control of the martyrs,

Such is the path for all servants of Christ,

The path from death to eternal life.

And here are a couple of videos that I thought were very moving.. The First by U2 after Katrina is very moving and powerful – it is a little dated now but the reminder that the saints of God are all the ordinary people who respond to the needs of the world is very powerful.

I also came across this beautiful rendition of the litany of the saints that I thought was worth sharing

Pumpkins Don’t Leave Holes

“Where did this thing come from?” Michael Pollan asked in his book Second Nature after he picked a 30-pound squash from his garden. There was no hole, after all, left behind in the garden that suggested the plant had converted 30 pounds of soil into fruit. Nor do my apple trees sink into the ground because they have given away 200 pounds of apples and are left perched on the edge of a crater. Pollan concluded, “That they’re not [leaving holes], it seems to me, should be counted something of a miracle. […] It is, in other words a gift.”

ironically though pumpkins are very much on many peoples’ minds at this season, they are usually seen as a throw away item.  The edible parts – the seeds and pulp are often cut out and thrown away so that we can make Jack O Lanterns  and scary decorations for our front yards and doorsteps.  That alone I find hard because pumpkin soup is one of my favourites.  But as well as that it reflects for me the throw away society in which we live and how much we often distain God’s gifts and provision.

The most powerful message conveyed to us by the harvest is that God’s creation is an amazing and miraculous example of sustainability, out of which our Creator is constantly gifting us with all that we need for life.

What a contrast to the way that we tend to operate! For example, in his book Green Revolution, Ben Lowe talks about the devastation caused by coal mining in the Appalachian states. Evidently three million pounds of explosives are used every day in West Virginia alone to blow off the tops of mountains to access coal for our electricity – something that has been on many of our minds this last week as we have watched the rescue of Chilean miners. As you can imagine, mining really does leave some big craters both on top of and underneath the earth.  It destroys not just the environment, but also the health of the people who live there.

Once we recognize that God is the initiator of sustainability, perhaps we too can become creative inventors of sustainable systems. Solar power and wind farms, which draw from God’s gifts of wind and sun, are both viable ways to produce electricity without leaving holes in the ground. If we observe the world around us as a gift from God, we start to see that hidden in many aspects of God’s creation are lessons for sustainability.

Halloween is coming – Consider Reverse Trick or Treating

I just came across this cool idea in Green America’s magaine: Greening America As Halloween is still a few weeks away it is something that you might like to think about as you plan your parties.

This Halloween, trick-or-treaters across U.S. and Canada will hand chocolate back to the homeowners they visit as part of Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Cocoa Campaign.  This is their Fourth Annual Reverse Trick-or-Treating! which is organized as a collaboration between several non profits including Green America and Global exchange.  The goal is to publicize the fact that most chocolate sold in the US is tainted by child slavery and exploitative conditions for adult workers.  Fair trade eliminates child labour and ensures healthy working conditions with a living wage for workers.

Thousands of groups of Trick-or-Treaters in the United States and Canada will unite to help:

• END poverty among cocoa farmers
• END forced/abusive child labor in the cocoa industry
• PROTECT the environment
• PROMOTE Fair Trade

How? By distributing Fair Trade chocolate to adults, attached to a card explaining these problems in the cocoa industry and how Fair Trade presents a solution.

To learn more and request your kit, visit the website here.

Getting Ready For Halloween

One of the things that really surprised and horrified me when I first came to the US was the huge emphasis on Halloween.  Even churches organized Halloween celebrations with kids dressed as witches and no one thought twice about feeding the monsters that came to their doors trick or treating.

Today there seems to be more talk about not celebrating Halloween because it has been so taken over by witches, covens and non Christian groups.  But is that the right attitude?  How could we redeem the celebration of Halloween and return it to the Christian celebration it once was?  How can we enter into the joy and celebration of God’s rhythm of feasting and add to the fun rather than trying to kill it?

The word Hallowe’en itself is a contraction of “Hallowed evening” the old English word for “holy” still seen in older translations of the Lord’s prayer .  The evening is hallowed because is is the beginning of the Feast of All Saints celebrated November 1st.  All greater feasts of the church calendar like Christmas and Easter begin in the evening the following the ancient Jewish practice of beginning the celebration of the Sabbath at sundown on Friday evening.  So it seems to me that ignoring Halloween and trying to just celebrate All Saints Day doesn’t really work.  What we need to do is reattach it to All Saints Day and regain its original and true significance.

So how can we do this?  Here are some possibilities:

Matt Stone conducts an alternative service – Thanksgiving for the Dead to reflect on lost loved ones and the saints who have gone before

Helen Hull Hitchcock from Women of Faith and Family suggests holding a children’s party at which children dress up as saints from past ages.  She has some other great suggestions that you can check out here

tom and I will be on the road this Halloween but here are some thoughts I have on celebrations we could do in the future to enter into the real meaning of Halloween

Plan a family heritage party. Invite people to do some work beforehand researching their family history and particularly the Christian saints who were a part of it.   Ask them to bring photos and stories to share.  Finish with a time of prayer for all those that have gone before us.

Several years ago when my youngest brother went to Greece where my father comes from he found out that it is possible that our family name Aroney comes from the name Aaron and that our family probably originated in Jerusalem many centuries ago.  It is probable that one of the reason they began the journey out of Jerusalem first to Constantinople then to Rhodes and finally to the tiny island of Kithera at the bottom of the Peloponnese mountains is because they became Christians.  There are a number of Greek orthodox priests in my father’s family history and my Aunt Mary was a very devout Greek Orthodox Christian.   I know less about my mother’s family history but would love to find out where her family too has had profound encounters with God.

Plan a Halloween pilgrimage. Again this might require some before time research.  Explore the Christian heritage of your community.  Where did the first Christians come from?  How did they interact with the native peoples?  Where was the first church established?  Who were some of the early Christians who impacted your community.  Plan a pilgrimage walk to the site of the first Christian community and if possible have a time of prayer and possibly even a eucharistic celebration to remember those who have gone before

What ideas do you have for a redeemed Halloween celebration?

The Saints are Coming

Here is a thought provoking video to reflect on during All Saints Day.  Thanks to Paul Mayers who made me aware of this.  He has some other great and sobering reflections on Halloween too.  I had no idea that it had become so popular in Britain.  Shouldn’t surprise me my British friends all love their sweets!