November 6, 2019

ALL SOULS by May Sarton

Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?
Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,
The cold bleak voices of the early morning
When all the birds are dumb in dark November—
Remember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,
Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak.
Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
“Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven.”

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited—
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.

I love to celebrate All Souls Day in a congregation. It's true that "All Souls" is technically a Christian holiday, and yet there are quite a few UU congregations named "All Souls."  In fact, it was a Unitarian Church in New York city that first took the name All Souls. And our largest congregation at present, All Souls in Tulsa, OK also bears the name. 

The reason for this seems to be that Universalism, which was Christian, albeit unorthodox, held to the heretical belief that every being would ultimately be "saved," because the God they worshiped would not condemn any of his children to "Hell." Controversies raged over whether there would be instant Universal salvation, or a time of penance and reconciliation, also known as "limited" Atonement.

UU Christians and theists (as well as people like me, who are neither but still value the positive features of their former faith traditions) have long claimed that when UUism became primarily Humanist, we "threw the baby out with the bathwater." I think doing away with a sacred day like All Souls is a good example of that.  Most religious traditions have some recognition of the departed, traditionally around the time of year when Days grow short and Nature reminds us of our own demise as well as the impermanence of all things.

Taking time to pay attention to these things, and to comprehend our own finitude, can make life more precious, and can also bring us together, for the inevitability of death is one thing that unites us all. There is no better place than a warm, caring community to ponder and assimilate these truths. A community like GNUUC.

For all who have left us this year, let us lift up our gratitude and our attention.

Blessed Be.

Cynthia