I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints…
Ephesians 1:17-18
The day before a leader in our diocese crossed an important threshold in ministry, I asked her who would be with her in spirit. Her eyes shone as she told me of a priest who had believed in her when she was very young, and another who had been a guiding light throughout her life. “Their spirits will be with me tomorrow,” she said, and I had no doubt there would be great rejoicing among the saints in light.
I told her that I sometimes have the same experience with my mother, who will be among those for whom I pray on All Saints Sunday. When I least expect it, something she used to say comes to mind, as a gentle exhortation or word of encouragement. Even more powerful are the times when I feel she is as close as the veil between this life and the next will allow.
Of this mysterious connection we can feel to those who have died, the wondrous author and Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner once wrote:
Who knows what ‘the communion of saints’ means, but surely it means more than just that we are haunted by ghosts because they are not ghosts, these people we once knew, but saints in the sense that through them something of the power and richness of life itself not only touched us once long ago, but continues to touch us.1
Those moments assure us that there is another realm that awaits us all. The great naturalist Jane Goodall, whose life we will celebrate at Washington National Cathedral on November 12, recounted an experience, shortly after her husband died, when he came to her.
I woke up in the night—I was on my own in my Gombe house. Derek was there. He was telling me wonderful things. That all was well. He vanished. I wanted to remember what he said, and as I tried, it felt like fainting, a roaring in my ears. When he went away, I wanted desperately to remember what he said—the roaring began again. After that I could not remember anything.2
In a podcast conversation with Dean Randy Hollerith shortly before she died, Jane Goodall told him that based on that encounter and other experiences, she was absolutely certain that death is not the end. “What comes beyond?” she said. “I don’t know, but something. And I think it will be a great adventure to find out what that something is.”3
What’s more, those fleeting, unpredictable moments of connection with those who have died assure us that our lives matter. The poet David Whyte writes:
You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.4
In preparation for Dr. Goodall’s memorial service, I have been reading A Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, which she co-wrote, at age 89, with Douglas Adams. Nearly every page is a testimony to her conviction that each one of us has the potential to make a lasting difference to the well-being of the planet, on which all our lives depend. Even more moving, however, is the message she left for us to receive after her death.
On this All Saints weekend, I invite you to listen to her words, spoken directly to us all.
Our lives matter.
1Frederick Buechner. “The Communion of Saints.” In The Magnificent Defeat. (New York: Harper & Row), 1966.
2Quoted in Witness to Belief: Conversations on Faith and Meaning by Russell J. Levenson, Jr.
3Crossroads, The Cathedral Podcast, “Dr. Jane Goodall on Faith, Curiosity, and a Passion for Learning.
4“What to Remember When Waking,” by David Whyte in River Flow: New and Selected Poems (Langley, WA: Many Rivers Press, 2007), 352.
