Samhain and Hopelessness

It's hard to believe that it is already Hallowe'en, that All Saints/All Souls Day is upon us, that the Day of the Dead is here . . .

This is a time, the pagans tell us, when the barriers between the world of the living and the dead ae their thinnest. This liminal time, these few days, now is a time when it is especially apt to ponder mortality and eternity.

I've been thinking of Leonel for the past week. In preparing for last week's sermon (on Universal and All-Conquering Love), I was brought back to the last months of his life, the time when he was in such despair about his life and our life together. His miraculous recovery from Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis, the extensive killing of his skin due to severe allergy to peniciliin. And his dying in my arms.

I wonder where I'd be in my life if Leonel had not died when he did. He died just as "the cocktail" was beginning to transform AIDS from a death sentence to a manageable chronic illness. I resolved, in my first yar of grieving, that even if he had been put on the cocktail, it would have killed him (all those drugs are poisons, and every new drug brought him to the brink of death before there was any positive result), but I still miss him so.

And in missing him, I wonder if I am totally "stuck."

I look around my house. He would be so proud to be in this place . . . but he would also have insisted that we keep things ordered and uncluttered. Not that his homes didn't have an abundance of "stuff," but his furniture and plants and prints and statues and stained glass were cared for, polished, ready for company.

And then I look at my place, and my life. Large and sprawling, cluttered, weary and weary-making. Hmm.

At this liminal time, can I ask Leonel to be with me for a couple of days, to consider what it is I am up to, and to recommit myself to a simpler and more manageable life, to a focus on the really important and a detachment from that which is less significant?

May I ask Leonel to help me find patience for myself? And may I ask him to help me remember my vocation, both my general vocation to live a considered life, and my special vocation to ordained ministry, and my temporal vocation to this challenging community. And to be open to learn what I need to learn at this time in my development, to allow me to life in ways that are more nurturing and generative . . .

Hallowe'en. Need to clear the front steps and organize the front hall. Get the right bulbs into the sconces on the porch. And figure out my own costume?!?!?

Blue patches emerging among clouds outside. Heart lifted. (Cindy Kallet singing now, "Come on, get your oars and row, darling.") Breathing deeply.

Good morning.