Beyond the Patio

The Celebration of Life
Luke 6:20-31

What is one word that you would like as an epitaph? Sam Keen in his book To a Dancing God (Harper and Row) answers. “I know what I would like to have for mine. It is celebration!”

I have learned over the years how important celebration is in our lives.  Celebration includes remembering people and events that have shaped our lives. Celebration includes praise and thanksgiving which I believe has a tremendous effect on our inner well being. They focus our lives in a positive direction. It is said that Charles Wesley wrote over 6000 hymns many of which were hymns of celebration and praise. He said that he wrote these hymns of celebration instead of the “dreary thumping of some hymns”. We need to move ahead with a song of joy in our lips and in our hearts rather than having the dreary thumping song of regret, despair, and complaint on our minds.

All Saints Day (or the Octave of All Saints) is a time to celebrate and rejoice in all those people who down through the ages have somehow experienced the spark of the Divine within them and have known a Divine presence in all of life.  These are the people have been overcome by the Love of God and in turn have passed that love on to others in the best way that they could. So it is all in all a celebration of life.

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When we think of it as a celebration of life, All Saints is a time not just to remember those who have been designated “saints” by some ecclesiastical authority, those who have been canonized by the church, but to remember all those people who in some way or another have ion some way had an effect on our lives.  At this time we celebrate family, friends, strangers, those that we have never met, those that lived years ago who have touched us with some of the power and richness of life. We celebrate those who have loved us, those that we have loved and  those who taught us to understand the meaning of our lives.

Frederick Buechner speaking of All Saints Day says this:

On all Saints Day , it is not just the saints of the church that we should remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives, who one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, and whom we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or even hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own.( Frederick Buechner Listening to your Life, Harper, San Francisco, 1992)

We celebrate all of these because they are a part of us and even though many of them have died, they remain a part of us today.

Sometimes we run into people in the ordinary course of our lives that we realize are saints because of their simplicity and everyday devotion to helping others.  They have a particular joy in their lives that you remember for a long time and rejoice that there are people like them in the world.

I remember some of these kind of people from my first parishes in Saskatchewan There was one couple who became affectingly known as Grandpa and Grandma Stephens. They were always there for us. When we first moved to that community and couldn’t get into the rectory right away, we stayed at their house for a few days. When the house had a fire and we couldn’t get back into the house for awhile, they opened their house for us again. In earlier times Grandpa Stephens used to meet the train with a team of horses and pick of the mail and take it to a little community a number of miles south where they ran the Post Office. He had many experiences of getting that mail through blizzards and when he was so sick that he shouldn’t have been out. He was a grand old man and I learned a great deal from him.

One day I sat with Grandpa Stephens in the hospital for an extra long time.  He talked a lot about his life and I can’t remember the exact words that he spoke but in essence he was saying to me, “I suppose you could say that I have not many possessions, and I can point to very few accomplishments in my life, but I can say that if I were to die tomorrow, I have known love, I have received the great gift of having been loved, and I have had the great privilege of being able to give love, and that in the end is all that matters.” He went over his life in memory and pronounced to himself and to the world that “all was well”. He died that night. His funeral a few days later was certainly a celebration of life.

I carry people like these in my memory and celebrate the fact that I have known them.

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In the Gospel today Jesus presents to us with the beatitudes. I think that the beatitudes whether in Luke or in Matthews Gospel  says a lot about being a Saint in this world.  He is saying in effect:

“You may be poor, hungry , sorrowful, not popular in society, but you are important in the eyes of God and you are important for the advancement of the Kingdom of God on earth. Why? Because you have learned that there are riches beyond wealth and status. Because you do not have all the trappings around you distracting you, you are more aware of the spiritual centre of your life where true joy, happiness and peace are to be found. You know that you are dependent upon God and one another. You know that love above all else is to be treasured. You know how to laugh in your heart and not just in your mouth. You know that sometimes you need take on some of the world’s pain in order to do God’s will. You are the people through whom the reign of God will become a reality.”

What is presented here is a picture of how we ought to be and could be. It is a picture of what it means to be holy. The words of the beatitudes have touch many people within. They have brought them so in touch with their inner reality that every aspect of their outer life has been affected. Some have said that these kind of people that we refer to as “saints” have lived their lives inside-out.  It is simply amazing how people who were materially depraved became so in touch with their inner selves they became spiritual giants.

Our praise can go beyond words. It means getting in touch with our inner selves and then giving ourselves, all that we are and all that we have in service to the human family.  So today we rejoice and celebrate the lives of these spirited people that have affected our lives in some way along with all the other Saints through the ages.  After we recognize the lives of these people we then as a daily practice need to get in touch with who we are deep below the surface of our lives and the true meaning of our lives. This can be done through some form of meditation designed to help us to use silence to go beyond the ego and to get in touch with the source of true peace, happiness and joy that lies within us. Then, we get up, go out, and be who we really are – another of God’s saints in the world.

That is how every day becomes a celebration of life.

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