All Saint’s Day

It’s that time again. Poetry 101, but if you decide to skip class I won’t know it, so your grade won’t be docked.

 

All Saint’s Day

 

It’s November now.

Last night, restless spirits

stole October’s breath, along with

last leaves from the maple tree Dad planted

a dozen years before his death.

In morning silence, secrets are told;

a pheasant, flushed from the windbreak,

a cacophony of crows, and the timeless trill

of cranes in flight. That sudden rustle

in the golden carpet—is it a striped snake

or the footsteps of my ancestors?

 

c Lyn Messersmith

11/1/2016

 

       All Saints Day gets ignored in the cacophony around Halloween, but it deserves our attention because it’s really about honoring those who have gone before us. Saints aren’t just people who led perfect lives. They were ordinary humans who, in spite of their very human faults and foibles, managed to bring grace and goodness to a world badly in need of such. It’s been said that even Mother Teresa had a sharp tongue on occasion.

Saints aren’t all dead either. That fellow who stopped to help you change a tire, the people who stuff bags for the Bulldog Backpack program, provide food for the Community Table, and the neighbor who took his snowblower down your sidewalk last week, even though he lives across the street and a block away, all qualify.

A line from a song says the only difference between a sinner and a saint is that one’s a believer and the other one ain’t. I would propose that defining your belief isn’t really necessary as long as that belief is expressed in ways that make the world a little kinder and safer for the rest of us.

Let’s celebrate All Saint’s Day all month, by reflecting on the ancestors who worked to make our lives a little better than what they had.

Here’s your next assignment. Go out and about this week with the intention of spotting the saints among us and thanking them. Maybe hang out with them awhile; see if it’s catching. That aspect of community spread would be a true blessing.