Homily given by Rev. Frank Clarkson on All Souls Sunday, October 30, 2022.

I’m going to begin with a reading, from a little book called The Road to Donaguile by Herbert O’Driscoll, an Anglican priest in Canada who grew up in Ireland. In this passage, he describes his grandmother’s declining health, which began when she lost the ability to walk at forty, and lasted until she died thirty years later. This is Herbert O’Driscoll, remembering his grandparents, from those years:

“During that time she and my grandfather continued their quiet love affair, rich with three daughters, two sons, and the memory of a child, my namesake, who would because of early death remain forever five years old.

“Every day there were particular times when they would enjoy each other’s company. In the late morning they would read the paper and comment about the world to each other. Later, when the work in the fields was over, he would again sit with her. When she died, her body was buried in the churchyard, as was the custom of those days. It was also the custom that such things happened without involving the children, so my grandmother’s death was a distant and mysterious event, seen with puzzlement only through the tears in my mother’s eyes.

“The following year, summer having come again to the farm, I went there on holiday. One day we were to visit relatives considered distant in that small island world. We drove through the town and over the bridge, I in the back seat with my grandfather, my uncle and my mother in front. As we drove past the gates of the graveled driveway leading to the churchyard where the summer grass was high and green-gold in the sun, my grandfather, thinking he was unobserved, pressed his face against the window of the car and, with a small hidden motion of his hand, waved. 

“Somehow I knew what he was doing. Our eyes did not meet. Nothing was said. But I have always been aware that for me it was a moment of gentle but immense growing. Like a traveler who comes suddenly to the edge of a great escarpment and sees a country vast and mysterious and lovely, I came to my first understanding of the majesty and the vulnerability of human love.”

One of the good and important things we do here is remember and celebrate the lives of those who have died. It feels central to my vocation as a minister—being with people at the pivotal moments in their lives. There’s something so beautifully human about gathering for a memorial service, or gathering around a grave and returning the body of one we love back to the earth. This reverencing the dead is something we do well here, including the gatherings afterwards, usually organized by the Ladies Circle, with lovely food and conversation. It is holy, this remembering of those who have died, this celebrating of how they touched and blessed our lives.

And it doesn’t have to stop when the service is over and life seems to be getting back to normal. How could it? My wife Tracey remembers vividly what it felt like, a few days after her father had died, and she was in the grocery store, and there were all these people going about their daily lives, as if nothing had happened. Life does go on, but we are forever changed by the deaths of those close to us.

And that’s why, at this time of year, we gather to remember All Souls. The timing is pretty perfect, isn’t it? Summer is gone, the splendor of fall will be behind us soon. Things are dying, coming to an end, and especially this fall, I’m feeling it. This time of year always makes me mindful of my own mortality, but this year, even more so. The other day I said to Tracey, “Maybe it’s because I’m in the autumn of my life now.” Who knows when the winter will come? Who knows how long any of us have left? There’s an expression about getting older, when your parents’ generation is mostly gone: “We’re in the front row now.”

Some of you have been in the front row for a good long time! And you wear it well! You could teach us about living with joy and commitment, about aging with grace. And you do, more than you know, by the ways you show up, the ways you carry on living and loving. It’s one of the real blessings of communities like this one; that people of different ages get to be together. That we get to see one another, and hear each other’s stories. You young children, I know it may be hard for you to believe this, but every person here was, once upon a time, your age! Look around at the folks here—every one of us was, at one time, the age that you are now.

It’s hard to lose those we love to death. The grief we feel comes in proportion to how much these departed souls meant to us. So in that way our grief, as painful as it is, it’s a tribute, a monument, to what we shared with them; “the majesty and vulnerability of human love.”

A couple of days ago I was talking with one of our elders about her husband, who died a number of years ago. I asked her, “Do you still feel his presence?” And she said, “Oh, yes, I do.” And that made me glad. 

Death does bring an ending that is tangible and real. But is that the end of the story? We can still be connected to those we have loved and lost. We remember them. We make altars to their lives, here at church and in our homes. We are mindful of what parts of ourselves we have inherited from them. We remember them. And there is a kind of immortality in that. 

We are part of a larger and ongoing story, that we catch glimpses of from time to time. And it reminds us of what Herbert O’Driscoll first saw as a young boy: “the majesty and the vulnerability of human love.” Even with its pain and its sorrow, would you trade that for anything?

“One day we were to visit relatives considered distant in that small island world. We drove through the town and over the bridge, I in the back seat with my grandfather, my uncle and my mother in front. As we drove past the gates of the graveled driveway leading to the churchyard where the summer grass was high and green-gold in the sun, my grandfather, thinking he was unobserved, pressed his face against the window of the car and, with a small hidden motion of his hand, waved. 

“Somehow I knew what he was doing. Our eyes did not meet. Nothing was said. But I have always been aware that for me it was a moment of gentle but immense growing. Like a traveler who comes suddenly to the edge of a great escarpment and sees a country vast and mysterious and lovely, I came to my first understanding of the majesty and the vulnerability of human love” (Herbert O’Driscoll, The Road to Donaguile).

It is good, isn’t it? This life, and the love we give and receive. Even with, and especially with, its pain and its loss, it is good.

Amen.