Halloween, Samhain, All Saints and All Souls

From Ghoulies and Ghosties and things that go bump in the night, good lord deliver us.

Halloween is thought to be related to the Celtic Festival of Samhain (although I am fairly convinced that trick or treating only became popular in the UK following the film ET) but that is not to say that the Celtic spirits and adventurers who travelled to the New World did not just carry their Protestant faith with them but also earlier and more mysterious beliefs.

It is the loss of the hour as British Summer Time ends, the sudden onset of cold dark nights which here in Shotley Fields brings a mysterious and dangerous sense as we walk down the long tree lined driveway to the dark mysterious house surrounded by trees bending and creaking in the wind.

Unsurprisingly we did not have too many trick or treaters calling by on Halloween this year.

A few nights ago I had to walk across to the Church to make sure that the heating had switched itself on ready for the next day, it was about midnight, I disturbed an Owl whose ghostly flight shocked me as I entered the Churchyard and crossed between gravestones to the boiler house.

It was eerie but not scary, challenging but not frightening, after all I am a sensible seventy four year old am I not?

But then again we often, in these dark, pre Christmas nights, find ourselves in touch with older, more mysterious sensibilities.

As has often been the case in the history of the church, pagan festivals have been 'baptised' and to a certain degree domesticated. But in the half light, in our and fears, in our dreams, we are still people with deep memories of earlier ancient times, family memories, folk memories, tricks of memory, of shadows in the firelight.

And as those who have gone before remain alive in our hearts so we envisage to where they have been called, where they have gathered, what they have  become and whether at some future time we will meet them again.

So the Festivals of All Saints and All Souls are a time of Remembrance. Remembrance of those who have died, gone before us in faith, those who have in their lives been examples of christian living and believing.

The company of Saints.

All Souls.

There is a deeply felt belief that we are standing in the line of faith that stretches from before the beginning of time and will extend until the end of all things, the consummation of human life into the glorious kingdom of God.

I can only imagine those I have known and loved, parents, grandparents, wife and child, who have died and yet who live on in my heart. But I also believe that their names and their memories will not just be seived through my memory and the memory of others until they are lost forever, it is part of my deeply held theological belief that their names are written in the hand of God in 'registrar's ink' and that those names will not be  lost.

At this time of year I choose to remember by name all those who have died and who continue to live in my heart and I invite others to join with me in so remembering.

There is a great cloud of witnesses, a heavenly chorus, praising God, it is a Chorus that in due time I too will join and when that time comes I too will, I am confident, be welcomed home.

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