Homily given by Rev. Frank Clarkson on All Souls Day, October 29, 2023.

We have come again to that time of year when the leaves are falling, birds are flying south, summer is gone. And if you take time to notice, you can sense a shift, something stirring.

From the ancient Celts comes the idea of a “thin place,” a time or space where the threshold between the physical world and the spirit world is thin and permeable. We are at one of those times—can you feel it?

All Hallow’s Eve has become about candy and costumes, but it has deeper roots that that. In the pagan calendar it’s a cross quarter day, halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. All Hallow’s Eve or Samhain was the time when people of the old religion remembered their dead. In Mexico the Day of the Dead is a combination of the Aztec custom of celebrating ancestors with the Christian observance of All Souls’ Day. In these days we quite naturally think of those we have loved and lost. It is in our bones, especially at this time of year, to remember those who have died. And it is good that we do.

Earlier this week I got an email from a church member who was remembering the memorial service for Sally Liebermann last July. She wrote,”That service was so moving. I did not know the people next to me (they were Sally's cousins), but by the end we were hugging and crying together.”

One of my first experiences of death was when I was in middle school, and my grandfather and two of his friends died in a house fire. Suddenly they were gone. I remember the funeral, that the Methodist church was full, that we sang “O God our Help in Ages Past,” and that my cousin John was crying hard, and unselfconsciously.

In my family we tended to keep our feelings hidden. My dad liked to repeat that ridiculous saying, “Keep a stiff upper lip.” But when our Pops died, even my father cried. In those days, we let down our guard with one another. Why didn’t we do that more often?

Which is one reason I love the church, and you people in particular. Because this is, among other things, a good place for letting your feelings come to the surface. This sanctuary is a safe place to cry. Which is why we have Kleenex in every pew! But too often, when we start to feel emotional, we apologize. Why do we do that? Aren’t our tears, our sobs, our quivery lips, an honest testament to the sorrow that we feel? A gentle honoring of those we love, and what we have lost? Please don’t apologize for that. Your tears are a blessing, to you, and to those who bear witness to them. When you’re grieving, you’re not supposed to take care of those around you. It’s our job to take care of you—to hold a space where you can feel your feelings and, when you’re ready, give voice to your loss.

It makes me sad that sometimes, when people are suffering, they stay away from church. Because they think, “Nobody want to be around me when I’m down.” If that’s true, then there’s a church which has betrayed its calling. Because if nothing else, we are here to hold open a space where you can be in touch with the heights and depths of life, its light and its shadow. So when you’re feeling broken or sad or discouraged, I hope you will come to church! Because you need a community at a time like that. And we need you.

Isn’t this sanctuary a thin place, where you can sense the presence of those who have died, where you can feel the Spirit moving in our midst. This thinness may be particularly evident at a memorial service, or on All Souls Day, but it can be any time, I sense it on an ordinary Sunday when, after the prayer, you are lighting candles. And I sense it when we are singing. 

You know, it’s hard to cry and sing at the same time. But when you’re not able to sing, it’s good, isn’t it, to be surrounded by those who are? To be held and buoyed by their voices, and their breathing, and their bodies, around you. With you. All in this boat, together.

“Drifting here with my ship’s companions,
all we kindred pilgrim souls, 
making our way by the lights of the heavens
in our beautiful blue boat home.”

Thanks for this world, and these companions; for those who have gone before us, and for these blessed connections we share; and for the Spirit “that makes us one, and binds us forever together, in spite of time and death and the space between the stars.”*

Amen.

*These beautiful words come from the Universalist minister David Bumbaugh: “We are here dedicated to the proposition that beneath all our differences and behind all our diversity there is a unity that makes us one and binds us forever together, in spite of time and death and the space between the stars.”