All Saints’ Day
It’s the time of year we often hear “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Louis Armstrong made it famous in 1938, though he first sang it as a child. The imagery—when the stars begin to fall, when the trumpet sounds its call—comes from Revelation. Once a funeral march, it pictured saints of this earth entering the Pearly Gates.
I didn’t grow up hearing much about saints. In time I met the “major” ones—Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich—whose wisdom still nourishes. In my roots, saints were “there,” and I was “here.” It was on Iona, that small island in the Hebrides, that I first heard of “thin places,” where heaven and earth draw close and the veil between worlds grows transparent.
Jesus’ death tears the temple veil from top to bottom—heaven and earth united, the glory of God revealed. Thomas Merton said, “We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and the divine is shining through it all the time.”
This awakens us to the urgency of now—to what Douglas Christie calls practicing paradise—awakening to the living world in this moment. We carry within us traces of a whole and holy world.
And so, we join our efforts with the saints alive—the ones who are marching here on earth with us, the ones through whom the Presence of the Divine shines in their earthy life, and even the ones who irritate us yet reveal a deeper part of ourselves and a hope for a new world.
And we join our efforts with the saints surrounding us—those who have gone before, those who walk with us still, each one a light along the path of Love. We are not alone. Together we are companions in the work of healing the world. Together, we are practicing paradise. We are held in this great communion, in this holy moment, where heaven and earth are close.
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