The increasing darkness of the days as autumn progresses brings to mind and sets the mood for the liturgical remembrances as the Church Year comes to a close. The Feast of All Saints is a beautiful day as we remember those who have demonstrated the love of God in their lives.
This glorious feast is followed by All Souls Day, a day when we remember all the faithful departed who are not “classified” as saints. Most of the people I’ve known throughout this long life I would not consider as Saints with a capital letter. They are saints according to scripture but I wouldn’t put them in the same category as Peter and Paul, Matthew and Mark, Benedict and Scholastica. They need to be remembered and prayed for just a we trust they are praying for us as they await the general resurrection at the end of time.
When I was a parish priest some of the congregation and I would visit the cemeteries on a Sunday near All Souls Day, walk around and pray for those parishioners we could no longer see. This, to me, made them a very real part of the parish family.
I was asked by a college friend to explain to her Lutheran choir about a Requiem Mass. They were singing part of a well known requiem and wanted to know more. I took the time to explain that Christ’s Church is made up of three parts: the Church Militant here on earth, the Church Expectant whose members we do not see but know they are safe in God’s hands and are being healed and made ready for heaven, and the Church Triumphant the saints and angels in heaven. I went further and explained that this was made more real to us when we had to walk through the church yard with its many graves in order to get into church. The Church Expectant was right there around them. Now we bury the faithful in a nice park far from the church where they worshipped. We have a tendency to forget them because they are not close to us. The choir grasped what I was saying, I think. I hope. One of the choir members wrote later about going to the country church where her husband was baptized and confirmed and the real feeling she had while walking into the church that the departed were surrounding her as well as the living members there that Sunday.
The lengthening darkness of these late autumn days also reminds us of the shortness of our own lives. My own diagnosis of treatable not curable cancer made me more aware of the time I have left here and what I should be doing with that time. In other words, the prospect of my own death has changed my life. Having been previously diagnosed with prostate cancer I became acutely aware of the transitory nature of this life. The second diagnosis this past August was not the shock that it might have been. I accepted it without the anger that I experienced the first time around. The increasing darkness of the season could make one more than a little morose. So far it hasn’t affected me in that fashion. With my SAD it may. I have a tendency to look for the good right now rather than dwell on morose.
Last Sunday morning was a treasure. I mentioned last week that that we ordained our new bishop. That meant that our Presiding Bishop was in the state since it is one of his jobs to ordain new bishops. The Presiding Bishop is elected by our General Convention to serve a nine year term. He is looked upon as our Primate. A Primate is the chief ecclesiastical officer. In other parts of the Anglican Communion the Primate is given the title archbishop. That was brought up several several Conventions past and was voted down. Bishop Michael Curry is our Presiding Bishop and has become known throughout the world as the preacher at the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Bishop Curry was our celebrant and preacher at the Cathedral here is Sioux Falls last Sunday. There was a full-church crowd. It was a wonderful liturgy and a great sermon. Those of us in the choir began rehearsal at 7:30 AM so we would be out of the way for the photo-ops before the service. Our Benedictine Community took advantage of the offer to have our picture taken with Bishop Curry.
Tuesday I had my blood draw (this happens every third week), my visit with the doctor and the first of my immunotherapy infusions. There is always a waiting period between the blood draw and the doctor’s visit so that the lab can complete its work and the doctor can have the results in hand. All of my blood work looks good which means everything is going according to plan. There was a delay in delivering the medication for my infusion. This could have been made worse by the fact that it was lunch time and the pharmacy is still in the midst of remodeling. The infusion itself is only 30 minutes and only one day. The chemotherapy was three hours for three days. So this is, as one nurse described it, a piece of cake. I’d rather have chocolate cake but I’ll take the infusion.
Wednesday brought our seemingly usual prelude to winter with freezing rain and snow. Again, as usual, there were a high number of accidents because people don’t remember how to drive in wintry weather. Not too much snow fell, but it was a foretaste of things to come since the weather prognosticators have announced a wetter than usual winter for us. The ground is so super-saturated already because of our excessive rain that any significant snow melt come spring will cause another round of flooding.
I enjoyed lunch with a friend on Thursday and attended a good OLLI class on the history of the English language. The rest of the week was quiet with lots of time to do what I wanted to do. Today, Saturday, included cleaning up the main deck by moving the furniture to the basement to aid in snow removal when the time comes which may be tomorrow!
Thanks again for reading, for your prayers and your encouragement.
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