For All Saints Day today, our Lutheran Church with its strong German heritage recognized those we lost this year. Their name was read, a candle lit and a bell tolled for each of these saints. A family that lost a husband, father, son, brother this year in his 50's donated a beautiful glass bowl filled with white sand to hold the candles during the service. It was very moving. This, and the sermon about not only the duty we owed to not only the past saints, but also those today and those to come, reminded me of your comment "the "saints" mean the clouds of witness who we believe surrounds in time and across time, as well as space." Maybe it's just my getting older, but there is something deeply connective and reassuring about being part of this continuum of faithful across time and space. Our society wants to atomize us into individual particles, it glorifies and fetishizes our individualism. (This election and much of recent culture seems to be about the individual want over any group or society need). To be part of and believe in something greater than oneself seems almost radical in these current circumstances. I accept my responsibility to those that have gone before us, to act as one today, and to allow for those to come. I felt more at peace than I have in quite a while. May I keep thus no matter the results on Tuesday.
--rustypickup
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