Faith Works 10-18-24

Faith Works 10-18-24
Jeff Gill

A landscape of departures and arrivals
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We are coming into the peak of both fall, and election season.

Election Day itself is Nov. 5 but a startling number of voters have shown a preference in recent years for getting it over with early, for whatever reasons, and early voting is likely to encompass two-thirds of the total 100,000 or so ballots cast in Licking County.

November 1 is All Saints Day in many Christian traditions, often observed on the first Sunday in November which would be Nov. 3 this year. That means we will (technically, at least) be thinking about saints before we do our voting.

Saints, the honored dead, are of course part of the seasonal round with the eve of All Saints, or All Hallows as the early English said, being on our cultural calendar as Hallowe'en (the apostrophe being your call, stylebook-wise). Secular Halloween acknowledges the change of season and the shortening of days, chill in the air and leaves crunching underfoot, and I don't have to tell you that the acknowledgement or even enthusiastic endorsement of death is part of "secular" spooky season.

It's hard not to think about death with shadows getting longer, and winter approaching, but All Saints as opposed to the eve of is something more to do with Chesterton's "democracy of the dead." His mediation on capital-T Tradition included the voice of those who have gone before, a not inconsiderable number of souls, who may know things we do not entirely understand, hence "the democracy of the dead."

We can get caught up, politically and socially, with the idea that the future is always new, and things are always going to get better, but history and tradition and the saints who have gone before bear witness to the reality that in many ways "there is nothing new under the sun" (that's not from Chesterton). The past may have something to teach us, and it certainly helped make us and shape us, for ill perhaps in some ways, but often for good.

Hence the role of saints.

Whether your faith tradition observes a formal process of canonization, or if you simply mark any believer's passing as a promotion into the ranks of the saints, this is a good time of year to reflect on the saints who have shaped your life, and even your community's life. Founders and builders and grandparents and caregivers, parents and family, friends and mentors. You don't have to be all that old to come to a point when you realize a number of your guideposts in life have "gone on before" as the hymn sings, and you might just have advocates in heaven.

A few of my friends and mentors have died in this last year, not to mention some close relatives by marriage. I've been wrestling with two different cemeteries in the last year to get markers erected for those who have passed, and in a few inscriptions, for those not yet gone but getting close. It's a bracing experience, the story of "the dash" and all that. My initial engraving is 1961, and the second number… who knows?

But I'm in this realm of thought less to confront my own death than my personal relationships with those who have already died, for whom many questions are answered, and whose support and encouragement and guidance is still active in my life. How is it active? That becomes an interesting theological question; some might say it's more psychological, but as Prof. Dumbledore would add, that doesn't make it any less real.

"For all the saints, who from their labors rest": to this group we present our living work, our choices, even our voting, and listen for their response. Can you hear it?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's listening to what this season has to say. Tell him what you hear at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.