...For all the saints

As we are fast approaching the most sacred time on the Christian calendar, I am trying to carve out some time to ponder over the past year and the changes it has brought to my life thinking in particular about those companions in mission that I have lost  along the way. It has been a year of loss both personal and congregationally for me and the folks at the parish to which I am assigned here on Staten Island. Friends, fellow clergy members, parishoners, and local folk active in our extended faith community,  have crossed over into the veil.  

Some families have lost a parent at too young an age; another lost both a sibling and a parent in the same year.  Another family lost an adult son in a freak car accident in which he was killed while sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. A patriarch for an extended family lost a heroic battle with debilitating illness and organ transplant. Our parish choir has lost four members in the last year alone. 

Two of my closest spiritual guides have died this year.  One, at a much too young age, the other after an illness left untreated for too long that resulted in a prolonged and difficult death.

And yet, life does move on in the continuum of time and space.  We grieve, and the grief does not leave us.  It scabs over and then falls off leaving a mark that we will carry with us for the rest of our natural life.  Memories become less painful, and we can often laugh at past events shared with our dearly departed ones, that seemed impossible to do in the immediate time surrounding their deaths.

And the year moves on and new  life enters into it. 

Even though the past year brought with it times of deep sorrow and despair, New light and life has seeped into it as well.  Several cousins welcomed new babies into their lives adding another grandchild, or experiencing one for the very first time. A niece gave birth to my brother's first grandchild, a daughter...sort of following a pattern for him: four sisters, two daughters and now a beauty of a grandchild. My daughter-in-law gave us a new grandchild, nephew and cousin that has given my "baby" one of his own. 

And the circle of life continues to roll and roll and roll. We ride it for a time here, and later in eternity.  It is a mysterious, event-filled and scary ride...but not one any of us would change.

This Sunday, those of us who worship in the Western Christian tradition will affirm our belief in the eternity of our lives as we celebrate again the ancient Easter liturgy and greet each other with the words: "Alleluia, Christ is Risen!", holding fast to the belief that those words so true to the apostles and disciples of old, are just as true for us today.

"The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia!"