All Saints, and All Souls. A uniquely provocative pairing at an odd time of the year– November.
October is the stormy transition from Summer to Autumn, and next month will be Winter, but for now we’re in the middle of unambiguously Autumnesque short, dark days and rainfall.
The backyard has become an unfamiliar place. Odd green growths are bursting out everywhere, including a lot of things that need to be kept under control immediately before weeding after the turn of the year will become a vast headache. But that stuff out there isn’t much seen because so much of the time the cold rain and wind are such that I’d rather stay inside until the weather’s a bit more hospitable, though that’s a long wait.
Decades ago I found a box and wrapped it in tin foil, and put some dead plants and rocks in it, put it in a corner where a window shone on it, and named it the “November Sky Garden.” It got dusty and was eventually discarded when I moved somewhere else, but I’ve remembered it. Its legacy is that I think of November skies as the most exotic of skies. Outside, I look up and admire how dramatic the November sky is, cloudy or clear.
The month with the most exotic skies is a month to really enjoy, especially when it’s not October, and it’s not the stressful month of December. All we have to worry about in November is Thanksgiving.
All Saints day is popularly taken as a day to celebrate the unofficial saints, living saints, whoever they may be. And why they might be saints. If we are not saints officially, or saintly all the time, we have our moments when we rise to difficult occasions and acquit ourselves well, in accord with our highest expectations and responsibilities.
A poem says, “I constantly need to be reminded of my own higher knowledge.” The inner voice speaks up. and, instead of screaming, we smile.
All Souls is an enigma of a feast day. Humans are created in the image of God, eternal beings, eternal souls, each with a spark of divinity.
“Why attempt to purify that which has never been defiled?” said Huang Po (“The Zen Teaching Of Huang Po”).
Yet, as we especially remember in November, Purgatory is a place many of us will go.