All Saints’ Day

DAILY BYTE

Today, being the 1st of November is observed as All Saints' Day in many parts of the Christian Church. While the particular understandings & practices surrounding All Saints’ Day differ between the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant traditions, the basic idea is that this is a day to remember all those who have died who have lived lives of extraordinary beauty, devotion & grace.

Who might some of those people be for you, whose memory is a source of deep joy & inspiration? As I think about that for myself I realise, with great gratitude, that the list that comes to mind is long indeed. Today let me share just one of those stories.

My grandmother, ‘Ouma’, was a simple, humble woman with an enormous heart of love and compassion that was open, quite literally, to all. She was someone who knew about the agonies of life, bearing burdens of suffering beyond what anyone could be expected to bear. But she always did so with a trusting graciousness that bore witness to the deep faith that was hers.

When she was in Std 6 (Grade 8) she came first in her class. But then one evening she overheard her parents talking, agonising over what to do as they simply could not afford to pay for both her and her older brother to attend high school. (These were the years of the Great Depression.) That night she cried right through the night as she truly loved school. The next morning, with true courage and selfless determination, she announced to her mother that she was tired of school and wanted to go out and get a job, which she did.

When she was just 24, with a 2 year old daughter (my mom), her husband was killed in the Second World War. He was coming home for a visit to see his little girl for only the third time when his ship, the SS Nova Scotia, was sunk by a German U-boat just a few hours before docking in Durban.

She married again, but was widowed a second time when she was 56, when her second husband, ‘Oupa’, was tragically killed in a mine accident. A few years later she got behind the wheel of a car for the first time, and just before her 60th birthday she finally got her driver's license - on the 6th attempt! (One of the times she failed was for speeding!)

She contracted breast cancer, had a total mastectomy, and continued living a full and productive life. Amongst many things, she was a dearly loved matron in a school for children with special needs, embracing every one of them as her own. Secondary cancer riddled her body, but right up to the very last day of her life her concern was always for others, such was the quality of the irrepressible life within her.

Today her memory is a special gift to me. It’s a reminder of the great mystery that we are not isolated individuals making our lonely way through the world. But thanks to the goodness and greatness of God, others have been given to us who have been living embodiments of what it truly means to be human, whose stories have wonderfully become interwoven with ours.

My prayer for you on this All Saints’ Day is that your own memories of the saints that you have know would come readily to mind as a source of inspiration and a gift of great joy.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Thank you gracious God for the gift of those whom we have known, who through the quality of their living and the extravagance of their loving have helped to bring the image of Jesus into clear and sharp focus for us. Help us today to remember them with deep gratitude, and to allow the compelling witness of their lives to challenge us as we seek to live in such a way that we too, like them, may add to the beauty of this world. Amen