The drumbeat of All Hallows

 

This year, All Saints Day, or ‘All Hallows’ falls on a Sunday.  The day is known to the rest of the world as November 1^st, the start of another month, another rotation of the earth in its’ journey around the sun.   I do love the ring of ‘All Hallows’ though, that echo of an ancient story, a continuous narrative arc through the centuries,  of Christians who have gone before us and tried to live out their faith in their time.   The church of course has lots of Saints Days for all the premier league saints, but there are so many obscure and less well known saints and this day celebrates their lives. 

 There is a richness and connectivity that “November 1^st” doesn’t quite have.   The difference lies, I believe, in the music that those Christians were listening to, the beat that guided and sustained their lives, often through far greater troubles and fears than we will ever have to face.  I am going to have to co-opt Henry Thoreau one last time. If someone does not keep pace with their companions, perhaps it is because they hear a different drummer. Let them step to the music which they hear, however measured or far away.

The difference between whether you see yourself in November 1^st or in All Hallows this Sunday is whether you are out of step a little with the general drift of things, the vibe as it were, of our society today.   Let me illustrate this by the prayers that we in the Episcopal Church end our morning and evening prayers with.   We go into our day with this prayer.   God most holy we give you thanks for bringing us out of the shadow of night into the light of morning; and we ask you for the joy of spending this day in your service, so that when evening comes, we may once more give you thanks, through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. 

Now that is a drumbeat, a music, that sets your day in a different direction, gives it a different framing.  We recognise that there is a God who has watched over us while we sleep and gifts us with a new day.   Serving God brings great joy to us and we end our day thankful because we lived congruent with who we are called to be this day .  All this has been made possible because of Jesus, our Lord.  

As free and responsible people, we have many drummers to choose from but All Hallows reminds us of the generations who have chosen to live their lives this way of Jesus and we are inspired to wake up each morning and have his words guide us into the day.

And at the end of the day, as the shadows draw in we pray these words.  Lord God almighty, come and dispel the darkness from our hearts, that in the radiance of your brightness we may know you, the only unfading light, glorious in all eternity.   It is good to flush out the stuff we wish we hadn’t done this day and to acknowledge that a degree of darkness is the lot of the human heart.  This prayer points us however to where forgiveness is found, where hope lies and where the triumph of love is guaranteed.  

This is a prayer we definitely need after watching the evening news, and even more so in these trying times.  Just today three people were brutally murdered in the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice and two days ago a Kurdish family of five drowned in the English Channel.  And yes, Covid numbers remain high.

We need all the support and structure and inspiration we need this winter.  We can do worse than committing these two short prayers to memory and making them the first and last things we say each day.   They may help us hear that distant drumbeat of hope and love this world so desperately needs.