The twenty-four hour period peaking at midnight on October 31 is a time when some believe that the line between the living and the dead becomes thin, and we can touch our departed loved ones in ways that we can’t the day before or the day after. In the Christian church, we celebrate All Saints Day on November 1, honoring and remembering all in our community who have gone on to the church triumphant. For the last several years, Davis UMC has sung a requiem on this day, or the closest Sunday to it, connecting us to that part of our Christian tradition, modeled after a Latin high mass, where we can find comfort through the sublime in music and poetry.
I got to hear the requiem twice yesterday, once as a parent to hear the small part of the children in the larger piece (to my delight, John actually seemed to know some of the Latin) and once in my role as pastor, as we officiated a virtually silent communion while the choir sang, “May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs welcome you upon your arrival, and lead you into the holy city of Jerusalem. May a choir of angels welcome you and, with poor Lazarus of old, may you have eternal rest.” All of this took place while the names of the dead flashed on the screen overhead—mostly names of persons who I knew that conjured memories and scenes, smiles and stories as I thought of them.
This summer my family and I saw the King Tut exhibit at the de Young along with thousands of others. The Pharaohs believed in an afterlife even more amazing than their lives on earth wherein they essentially became gods. Their elaborate mummification rituals, burial chambers and included riches were all part of this belief, as they thought their bodies needed to be fully preserved, and their possessions would all be necessary in the next life. And while we may consider this belief merely interesting and historical, it seems to me that the Pharaohs were right: their faces and their stories are being read by hundreds of thousands as these exhibits travel the world and people line up around the museum to get in. In their commitment to their beliefs, the Pharaohs have made those beliefs true; however powerful and influential they were in life, they are much larger in death. Their lives, their movements, their actions, their stories are known among the generations. What do any of us really have, in life or death, but our stories?
Which brings me back to the requiem and the remembering of our own dead. Our communities hold who we are, in life and in death, by knowing us well enough to know our stories, to hear our stories, and sometimes even to add their own mythologies to what we have done and been, as these stories are told among the generations in our communities of faith. We live on because we have been known, and because our spirits and stories now exist in the faith of those we have touched. What a blessing.