A Swift Uplifting Rush

a homily given by Claire Phillips-Thoryn

on All Souls Sunday, October 29, 2006

at The First Parish in Lincoln

Every Halloween, growing up, I had one beloved neighbor who never gave out candy. Instead she distributed comic books about bicycle safety, featuring a superhero named Sprocket-Man. The rest of the year she was a wonderful woman and we loved her, and so us neighborhood kids bore this annual instance of bad behavior with goodwill, shaking our heads that she just didn’t know any better. We’d tuck our annual edition of Sprocket-Man into our pumpkin-shaped baskets and head for the next house, running in the dark chilly night.

Ancient religions say this is the week that the membrane between our world and the spirit world is the thinnest. They say our beloved—and not so beloved—dead are there, separated from us by the most gossamer of strands. That’s one of the reasons we dress up like ghosts and skeletons on Halloween. Ancient religions celebrated this closeness to the dead for thousands of years, and when Roman Catholicism spread over all of Europe, it wove into the existing holidays like a blanket. Halloween was the night before All Saints Day, and after All Saints day came All Souls day, every year on November 2nd.

All Souls Day is not just a day you can buy half-priced Halloween candy. On All Souls Day we remember the souls, all the souls, of every person who has touched our lives even if they are not here anymore. We remember the people who left this world of yellow leaves and blue skies and woodsmoke, and have gone to an unknowable world, but whose love we still feel as a presence in our lives. All Souls Day is also called, in Europe and Mexico and other places, “The Day of the Dead” or “Dia de Los Muertos.”

There is a poem called, “I Am Not There” that reminds me when we miss someone we love, we can find pieces of them in all the different beautiful parts of the world, and feel comfort and support.

“I Am Not There”

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there.

I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds

That blow.

I am the diamond glints

On snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken

In the morning’s hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds

In circled flight.

I am the soft stars

That shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.

I am not there; I did not die.

I’ll read it again.

I love the image of sensing a loved one’s presence in the swift uplifting rush of birds in flight. I have a rabbi friend who said when she imagines God, she imagines big strong hands, warm against her shoulder-blades, spread like wings. When she needs support or comfort, she feels those hands holding her up, helping her to keep flying. All Souls Day reminds us of the many invisible hands and wings at our back, holding us, supporting, helping us to fly. Teachers, parents, children, grandparents, ancestors, friends, pets, heroes. All the people whose love and inspiration has changed our lives, continue to change our lives every day, in body or in spirit. So everyone, please do something for me. Sit up straight and move a little bit forward in your seat. Take your hands and hold them out in front of you. You see how strong they are, but you might not always feel so strong. Now place them on them on the shoulder blades of the people on either side of you. Right there on the upper back, the shoulder blades. Now everyone—just a little bit—lean back into those hands. Can you feel how everyone in this room is holding everyone else up? These are your wings—all the souls in this room, older or younger, living or gone, these will always be your wings. Fly. We will support you.

Amen.