All Souls 04

*Preached at Grace North Church October 31, 2004 by John R. Mabry*

I like to think of myself as an educated man, not superstitious or particularly gullible. And yet if, as might be appropriate on a day like Halloween, you were to say, "Fr. John, do you believe in ghosts", I would have no choice but to answer in the affirmative-I've simply had too much experience with them to believe otherwise.

When I was in high school my family lived in a house that had been previously occupied by some serious occultists. We noticed odd things happening in the house almost right away. Sometimes my dog Licorice would act like she had treed a cat, and would tend her prey, barking at and guarding what appeared to be an empty corner of the house.

Then there were the lights. I cannot count the number of times we would turn off all the lights going upstairs to bed, only to come back downstairs in the morning to find them all on. We thought at first that we had simply been mistaken about turning them off, but then we got intentional, even scientific about it. Soon there was no doubt. SOMEONE was turning those lights on, but it certainly wasn't us.

The most dramatic incident in that house happened to my mother, however. It was early November, and she was making Christmas ornaments to pass out at church. She dumped several packages of beads out on the dining room table, and spent a quiet but relaxing morning stringing them. At lunchtime, she went into the kitchen to fix herself something to eat.

When she returned to the dining room about 45 minutes later, she had to grab the wall to steady herself. In her absence, someone or something had arranged each different color of beads into concentric circles on the table-a nearly impossible feat for any human to accomplish in the time she was gone given the number of beads spread out there.

My mother screamed and rushed out into the snow. A neighbor took pity on her, and took her in until my father got home from work-she refused to enter the house by herself again that day.

I think it is no accident that this incident happened near the beginning of November, for this is the time when, according to the ancient Celts, the veil between this world and the next was extraordinarily thin. The Celts believed that when people died, their spirits did not immediately pass into the otherworld, because the barrier between the two worlds was impassable. Instead, they had to hang out for a while, haunting groves, meadows, or even their old houses, until the feast of Samhain [SOW-EN], which occurred, of course, near the end of our October and the beginning of November, when passage between the worlds was possible. The loved ones of the departed would say prayers and performs certain rituals to help them pass to their proper place of rest.

Of course, with the passage between the worlds wide open, the beloved spirits of the departed were not the only ones out and about. There were also dangerous spirits about. To protect themselves, their family, and even the spirits of their dearly departed, the Celtic peoples would paint scary faces on gourds and turnips to frighten away the ghouls, goblins, and other evil spirits. They even dressed up in frightening costumes and paraded around to further discourage whatever nefarious sprites might be abroad in the night.

There were other beings about, as well. Since for the Celts the otherworld was known as Faerie, the night was also thick with Fairies, who had a bit of a holiday in our world on that particular night. Now Fairies are a morally ambivalent lot; they are neither good nor evil. Fairies serve only the interests of the Fairies. They are kind to those who are kind to them and fierce to those who slight them. On Samhain, the Fairies used to go door to door, disguised as beggars. Those who were generous would be rewarded in some fashion, but beware if you turned them away empty-handed.

When the Romans conquered Britain, they brought their own traditions with them, and while their neighbors celebrated Samhain, they themselves celebrated the festival of Pamona, their harvest festival. Soon, the apples that were so treasured by the Romans had become part of the Celtic celebration as well.

But where Rome went, Christianity was not far behind. Pope Boniface IV in the 7th century decided to do away with the old pagan festivals by instituting a Christian holiday that would make them superfluous. So he decreed that a new holiday, All Saints, would be celebrated in the spring. But All Saints was a solemn occasion, and not nearly as much fun as Samhain, so the newly Christianized Celts simply observed both of them.

This did not please the Pope. Eventually, All Saints was moved to coincide with Samhain, and young men were encouraged to go begging from door to door to collect alms for the poor. Suddenly everyone was happy! The church felt satisfied that it had conquered the pagan threat because everyone was celebrating All Saints day, and the common folk were happy because they could just go on doing what they had always done at that time of the year. The Orthodox, by the way, never had to cope with those tenacious Celts, and celebrate All Saints to this day on the first Sunday after Pentecost.

In old English, All Saints was known as All Hallow's, which means, "all the holy ones." All Hallows Day IS All Saints Day, but the night before was known as All Hallows Eve, which is just a short skip and a jump to our current-day Halloween.

The ubiquitous symbol of Halloween, the Jack-o-lantern, has a wonderful legend behind it as well. According to an Irish legend, a man named Jack, who was quite a scoundrel by all accounts, deceived the Devil, and got him to climb up into a tree. Once the devil was up there, Jack cut a cross into the trunk of the tree, trapping the Devil up in the branches. When the Devil demanded that he removed the cross so he could come down, Jack drove a hard bargain. "I'll make you a deal," Jack told the Devil. "If you agree never to tempt me again for my whole life long, I'll let you come down." The Devil agreed, and kept his promise. Later, when Jack died, he was turned away from Heaven because of his wicked ways in life. So Jack showed up at the gates of Hell, and was met by the Devil. The Evil One so distrusted Jack that he wouldn't let him into Hell, either. Instead, in an uncharacteristic act of pity, the Devil gave Jack a glowing ember from the flames of Hell to help light his way in the severe darkness between the worlds. Jack hollowed out a turnip to house the ember, and "Jack's lantern" was born.

When the Irish came to America, they discovered that pumpkins made much more attractive lanterns than turnips, and before long, nary a hollowed-out turnip could be found in Irish neighborhoods.

But Halloween did not catch on in America for a long time beyond the ethnic Celtic neighborhoods. In the mid-1800s, only Episcopalians and Roman Catholics celebrated All Saints and All Hallow's Eve, and these two denominations only accounted for about 5% of the American population. In a rare display of ecumenical effort for the time, Anglicans and Catholics joined forces to lobby the government to recognize the two holidays and get them on the official calendars. They eventually succeeded, and the press played it up. Suddenly, bonfires and masquerade parties began gaining in popularity. And when the potato famine brought nearly seven hundred thousand Irish to the states in the late nineteenth century, more and more Jack-o-lanterns smiled eerily out into the brisk autumn night.

But it wasn't until 1921 that the little town of Anoka, Minnesota celebrated the first officially recognized celebration of Halloween. New York followed soon after in 1923, and Los Angeles two years later in 1925. From there it spread like wildfire across the country until it became the ubiquitous celebration it has now become, complete with jack-o-lanterns, bonfires, and trick-or-treaters dressed up as witches, ghosts, and more recently, spider-man.

But though, like most holidays of religious origin, it has been largely secularized, there is still a nugget of spiritual import, here. For the ancient Celts, the spirits of all those departed during the entire year found opportunity on this night to pass on to the otherworld, but that doesn't mean that they always want to go.

A few years ago, when Kate and I were still married and living in our house in San Leandro, I had an up-close and personal experience with just such a dearly-departed spirit. Once again, it was in early November, and I had been doing research for a sermon. I was looking for a particular magazine article I had been reading just the night before, and was certain I had placed it on top of a short stack of papers in my study.

It has mysteriously disappeared from the top of this stack, which, of course, set me off on a house-wide exploration for my missing article. I turned the house upside-down, and when I finally re-entered the study, frustrated and empty-handed, there was the missing magazine, smiling up at me from atop the very same stack it had been in the night before.

It stopped me cold in my tracks and I felt a shiver run through me. I felt a presence in the room, and in the very next moment, felt a little foolish that I had, even for a second, entertained the notion that I might have, dare I say it, a ghost in my house.

Now we had just moved into this house, and when I went to share my experience with Kate, she freaked out, yelled at me for trying to make her feel unsafe in our new home, and refused to speak to me for the rest of the evening. Ah, the joys of marriage! In the end, I am only a little chagrined to admit, I took the matter to a professional. Yes, I consulted a psychic. The psychic "tuned in" to the situation in her own way, and informed me that, yes, our house was indeed haunted. The ghost was of a woman named Emily, and she had died in the room that was now my study.

She had had a son who was lost to her because of drug abuse, and she died alone. Her spirit was drawn to me because I reminded her of her son, but her spirit was confused and frightened. It did not know how to pass on, and could not let go of the one place she felt safe. "What should I do?" I asked the psychic. "Well, what would you do if she was a parishioner?" the psychic asked me. "I suppose I would have a talk with her and encourage her to let go of her old life, and to embrace whatever new life was waiting for her." She nodded. "Why don't you do that?" She gave me a gentle banishing prayer to use after we had our talk and sent me on my way.

I felt a little silly, but when I got home, I sat down on the edge of the bed and asked Emily to join me. I actually patted the bed beside me as if inviting her to sit next to me. We had a little heart to heart talk-well, it was actually a monologue. Still, it felt to me like an intimate moment. I told her that her time here was done, that Kate and I needed to have our privacy here, and that she had much better things in store for her than this sad holding pattern that haunting this house afforded her. She must take courage, and move along. After I had said all that seemed necessary, I recited the little banishing prayer. Then I just sat there for a while feeling vaguely ridiculous.

Yet, Emily never returned. I never again felt a presence in the house that ought not be there, nor were there any unexplainable phenomena to contend with. Maybe it's just this magical time of year, but somehow Emily found the courage to pack up and move along into the otherworld where she belonged.

The feast of All Hallow's is also a time for us to let go and move on in our own lives, too. Autumn is a time of endings, of letting go summer, of the sun, of life itself. Many of us have had loved ones who have passed on recently. In our own parish, we have certainly had more than our share in the past several years. All Hallows is a time not only to honor and remember them, but it is also a time to let them go. To acknowledge what has passed, certainly, but also to embrace a new and different life that is ahead of us.

As you entered the church this morning, you were invited to write the names of your own dearly departed. Later in our service we will honor their memory, but I also invite you, in this time when the veil between the worlds is thin, to permit them to truly depart in peace, as the inscrutable laws of nature declare they must, however painful or unfair it may seem to us. Even if they have truly moved on, so long as we cling to them, it is we who are haunted. Like Emily, we must all let go, and move into whatever new life is before us. Let us pray

God of the living and the dead, give us grace, at this magical time of year, to both embrace what has been and to also let it go. Make us open to the new things thy Spirit is doing amongst and within us, that firmly grounded in the past, we may meet an uncertain future with fearless hope, secure in the calling of thy dear son, even Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with thee, world without end. Amen.