All Saints Day

 All Saints Day

Guest Writer: Karen Dubert

All Saints’ Day: a Crowd of Saints  2020

“After this, I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation.”—Rev 7:9

Fra Angelico

My solitude of social distance is suddenly congested

by reminders of the great cloud:

that crowd of witnesses huddled over there in eternity,

peering into time

from vast margins of timelessness,

voids of space.

How is it that we eternal beings—

embedded in time,

prehistoric insects in amber—

How is it we so obsess over the amber

that we imagine ourselves the focus?

We sing of saints “who from their labours rest”

possibly imagining

eternity as an endless “rest" of watching us—

Dreary infinitude.

This amber chamber in which we live and move and be

confounds, imprisons us

defining our vision

regulating our expression;

so we envision the ancestors of millennia

eagerly peering over each other’s shoulders

to catch glimpses of us—

“the living ones”

The irony catches in my throat,

a log hung up on the flotsam of a cosmic flood.

That our amber-vision defines us

rather than enabling us

to gaze beyond and marvel that

out of here, somewhere

amberlessness means

movement.

 (revised 2 Nov 2021)

Karen Dubert

dancing saints icon Saint Gregory Nyssa Episcopal Church David Sanger

Grace Chapter Daughters of the King at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church will lead a prayer vigil on All Saints Day, November 1, 2023, for peace in Israel/ Palestine. The chapel at Saint Mark’s will be open for prayers from 8:30 after Morning Prayer to 5 p.m. before the 12-step Eucharist. People are invited to attend the All Saints Eucharist at noon outdoors at the stone altar in the Columbarium, weather permitting, or the 5:30 p.m. Eucharist, and to pray in the chapel during the day, invoking all the saints to help us pray for peace in Israel/Palestine. Prayers for peace will be available in the chapel.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Redbud Blossoms and Fig Trees

Redbud Blossoms and Fig Trees

“Then [Jesus] told this parable: A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years, I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still, I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”—Luke 13:6-9.

There is a wild redbud tree outside my office window with beautiful pink budding flower clusters close to the stem in the spring. The tree is in the middle of wild bushes and hardwood trees. For several years, I saw no new life on it. Then, one spring, when I was outside, I noticed these beautiful blossoms and wondered where they came from.

When I returned to my office, I could not find the tree. Then I looked up from my desk. There they were, high above the other trees. The tree was flowering only in the canopy above my window. Lower down in my direct vision, there were no blossoms. It gave me pause, and I determined to stop during the day to look up from my line of sight—to interrupt my work to glance away and take in the beauty of the blossoms.

One more lesson from my blossoming redbud tree: It is divided into three parts near its trunk. For years, only one division seemed alive and flowering. The other two large sections had no leaves or blossoms. But this year, I notice that clusters of blooms have formed at the top of the middle division.

I am reminded of the fig tree in the Gospels. Jesus calls us to be patient and expectant. Our challenge is waiting for what appears dead to discover if it may still be alive and capable of producing beauty and fruit.

The same thing happened after a recent cold snap, where we thought all our bushes and plants were dead. In spring, green emerged from the roots of all our bushes.

Do not give up hope. New life continues to grow out of what seems dead. Nature keeps telling us this over and over again if we only stop, look, and listen.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Wisdom from Little Women

Wisdom from Little Women

Guest post by Isabel Anders

“What do girls do who haven’t any mothers to help them through their troubles?” 

—Jo in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

I have been fascinated watching the Korean series on Netflix titled Little Women, which is a completely original “take” on the intertwined stories of some very different sisters. “Loosely based on the 1868 novel of the same name,” indeed.

Unlike the Alcott classic, this series features only three sisters—though another sister they once had is said to be deceased.  And these really are women, not girls—the youngest, Oh In-hye, is eighteen, but is still in school and looks much younger.

They are “little” in the sense that they have no wealth, status, or even a stable home situation—and the greatest difference I see in this adaptation is that all of the adults in their lives have let them down. While the March sisters had the loving wisdom of Marmee, the mostly off-stage stability of their devoted father, and a society that still believed in the virtuous life—the Oh sisters have none of this.  Corruption, deceit, and even terror stalk their lives, symbolized by a mysterious blue orchid.

Some religious ritual enters into the story by way of funerals and honoring deceased elders.  But there is nothing like Marmee’s faith or a father’s inspiring pastoral duties in wartime to provide meaning and sustenance to the younger generation.

Marmee told her girls: “The more you love and trust God, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother.” 

But more than giving advice, Marmee in the original Little Women lived this reality while struggling herself in their midst. The mother of the Oh sisters, in stark contrast, steals their long-saved money and cruelly abandons them as they try to provide for Oh In-hye.

These sisters widely out-mother their mother, though they face constant temptations to relax their innate sense of virtue and rightness. They nearly succumb to terrible onslaughts. But their resiliency and beauty as persons—and their accomplishments through the plot’s many riveting twists and turns—are stunning in every sense.

So, consider Little Women—both the classic novel and the modernized tale—and what can be gleaned from two fascinating family sagas of sisters who are learning to pull together and to embody feminine strength in their own times.

Isabel Anders’ latest book is Wisdom From Little Women with Tracy Grant.

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Little-Women-Louisa-Alcott/dp/B09MYRFW53/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3H9IL0C84EIPA&keywords=Wisdom+From+Little+Women&qid=1665096789&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjAwIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=wisdom+from+little+women%2Cstripbooks%2C179&sr=1-1

joanna. joannaseibert.com