The war continues in the middle east, in lands long considered ‘holy’. The violence there today has confounded us, saddened us, grieved us to the core. Even though many here may not have close connections to the region, we nevertheless feel a great and unresolvable human travesty continues to happen in a place that feels anything but holy.

Even pithy old sayings don’t seem to make sense anymore. Have you ever used this one: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”?[1] As if the problem can be solved merely by knowing more facts about history.

We are coming to realize, however, that the solution is not just knowing more. Rather, we need to learn how to know. What version of history? Whose history are we listening to? There is more that needs to happen than defending a certain point of view, right or wrong, if this conflict will ever end.

This is probably why Albert Einstein, the greatest mind of the 20^th century, said decades before the current conflicts in the Middle East first erupted: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”[2]

Jesus’ preaching doesn’t satisfy the analytical, rational mind. The Beatitudes are not easy to understand from a rational perspective.[3] How can the poor be blessed? How can the reviled have their reward? How can the peacemakers lead the way to the kingdom of God? Our rational world is at complete odds with the meaning of blessing and saintliness.

If you asked someone today to describe people who are saintly, they probably wouldn’t respond by quoting the Beatitudes. More to the point, we have a pretty good idea of what makes a blessed life: Blessed are the rich … Blessed are the sexy and glamorous … Blessed are the powerful … Blessed are those who get everything they want … Blessed are those who are famous …[4]

The paradoxical style of Jesus’ teaching instead activates another part of our minds and hearts— the intuitive, imaginative mind. It’s a knowing that the heart knows full well even if the left brain can’t contain it. You have to experience the love of God yourself. The solution is having a change of heart.

Today is the festival of All Saints. The Protestant reformation made the bold claim that we are all saints. Martin Luther said this is possible because at the same time we are all sinners.[5] Maybe it’s not easy to understand this. But at the heart level, it is because all the saints in history were also all human beings living a very human life. They made mistakes. They weren’t always faithful. They were afraid, anxious and angry at times. They had their passions and desires.

Yet the truth is, despite their sin, even because of their sin, these saints were beloved by God. It is a simple truth when before we engage our minds, we open our hearts to it.

Saint Bonaventure taught that we are each “loved by God in a particular and incomparable manner …”[6] Other saints of old, such as Francis of Assisi, taught that the love of God for each soul is unique and made to order. And that is why any “saved” person feels beloved, chosen, and even ‘God’s favourite’. God’s love is always and precisely particular, and thus intimate.

Many people in the bible also knew and experienced this specialness. Yes, ‘secret’, or even ‘hidden secret’ is what King David[7] and other saints of old—such as Saint Paul—called this special, particular love of God for them. The love of God is not something you can explain. It must be personally experienced: Because God seeks and desires intimacy with each human being.

And once we experience such intimacy, we forgive ourselves. We know our sin, our shortcomings. We have failed. Yet, at the same time, we are unconditionally loved. Once we experience such intimacy, we recognize it in the other. It is not a selfish love, not a what’s-in-it-for-me mentality; that’s the calculating left-brain, analytical side, again.

Rather, it’s a generous, giving kind of love based on the vision, the expansive imagination, of God’s love for all people regardless their skin colour, their religion, their political ideology, etc.

Today we not only name the new saints, baptized in the last year, we also remember our beloved saints of old. An important part of marking All Saints is recalling to our imagination those who have made a difference in our lives, people who took the time to teach us and show us—maybe even from childhood—that we are deeply loved by God.[8]

How do we remember someone? What is their legacy? More importantly, how does their legacy affect your behaviour, your being, in life today? So, I ask you to bring to your mind a vision of your loved one. What do you see?

The late American writer Brian Doyle wrote a poem about his sister. And her smile is what he remembers about her—seen in his mind’s eye. He writes a poem entitled, “Ten Thousand Smiles”:

“I was just calculating that my sister, whom I have known for 700 months, which is nearly three thousand weeks, which is nearly twenty thousand days (which is a remarkable number of days when you think about it; I mean, that’s a stunning heap of pain and laughter), has smiled at me roughly 10,000 times, give or take a few thousand. Now, did she also occasionally snarl and shriek? O yes she did.

But ten thousand smiles, that’s a remarkable number of smiles, and I want to stay with the smiles here. Q: what are the cumulative effects of so many smiles? Can you get smile burns? Can your interior warmth go up a point after so many smiles? Does each smile register somehow permanently in you, like a scar? Can you get smiling scars?

We can see the effect of smiles on faces, the cheerful lines that smiles cut in skin after years of use; do smiles also get cut into people who have been smiled upon? If everything we know about everything is hardly anything, could smiles be food?”[9]

God smiles at each of us. That’s the vision of God we must hold on to. God’s face turns to us in Christ and we are welcomed with arms outstretched. When our hearts find their home in the love of God for each of us, we are indeed, all of us, saints in Christ.

Pastor Ted told me of an “accident” that happened during the worship service one All Saint’s Sunday service in a former parish of his years ago. The white pillar candles were all lighted in a row on the altar—remembering each one of the saints.

As the candles burned down during the service, he realized with growing concern the problem: There was a draft coming across the altar. And the candles were too close to each other. It had been a busy year. The flames from the candles, therefore, conspired to melt the wax in an accelerated, agitated fashion. By the end of the service the melted wax pooled quickly into one amorphous blob covering most of the altar.

All of it belongs to the One. It may be hard to believe. But God’s love overcomes whatever is between us, whatever separates and divides us. In our common humanity, like all the wax pooling together on the altar, we find our unity in the Creator who lovingly made us all in God’s image.

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[1] The quote is attributed to writer and philosopher George Santayana.

[2] “What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck,” The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929: 117.

[3] Matthew 5:1-12; the Gospel for All Saints Sunday, Year A (Revised Common Lectionary).

[4] Diana Butler Bass, “Unexpected Saintliness” Sunday Musings (Substack: The Cottage /Diana Butler Bass), 5 November 2023.

[5] simul justus et peccator; simultaneously saint and sinner.

[6] Cited in Richard Rohr, “God’s Passionate Love” (Daily Meditation: http://www.cac.org, 22 October 2023).

[7] Psalm 25:14

[8] Lindsey Jorgensen-Skakum, “Blessed Saints” Eternity for Today (Winnipeg: ELCIC, 1 November 2023).

[9] Brian Doyle, “Ten Thousand Smiles” The Kind of Brave You Want To Be (Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2016), p.52.