“When the grandmothers speak, the Earth will heal.” – Hopi Proverb

If you listen, you can hear their voices.

Beyond the sounds of traffic and sirens.

The vibrating and ringing of phones.

The clicking of the keyboard.

The hum of the air conditioner.

They are on the winds that have blown for thousands of years.

They are in the rushing of the water that has frozen and thawed and frozen and thawed and frozen and thawed since the earth first cooled.

They are in the crashing of the waves on the shore and the rustling of the leaves on the trees.

They are in the beating of our heart and the silence of the sleepless night.

If you listen, you can hear their voices.

They are the voices of all who have come before. The voices of our ancestors.

They are the wisdom of the ages.

There truly may be no limit to our technological capacity. To our capacity to produce and consume. To discover and explore. As human beings, we are wonders … and yet there is a seductiveness to it all. A seductiveness to our power, to our seemingly limitless capacity. It can tempt us only to trust in ourselves. To seek only our own burnished light. To believe value only exists in the latest development, the most recent thought.

To look only to the Tweet and not to the ancient text.

To forget that there are those who have come before.
To forget to listen.
To forget…
To forget…
To forget…

On All Saints Day … we remember.
On All Saints Day … we listen.
On All Saints Day, our very name as a community reminds us that we are always in communion, always in the presence of ancestors unseen but not unfelt. Their voices still speak, if we have the ears to hear. Their ancient wisdom is still there, if we will let it re-emerge from our hearts.

On All Saints Day, the memorial book will be laid on the table, full of names of those whose wisdom and love has brought us this far on the way.

They are merely the latest in the line of the communion of saints. Those whom we have loved but see no longer. Those whom we proclaim each time we gather around the table with us singing as “angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.”

They remind us of the best of ourselves. They remind us of what really matters in life. They remind us that, sooner than we might think, we will be joining them.

We can almost still hear their voices – such a short time ago it seems that they were with us. And if we listen, we can hear them … on the wind, in the water, beating as our heart.

If we listen, we can hear their voices and remember that we are not the center of the universe … that burden can be lifted from us.

If we listen, we can hear their voices and remember that, in the end, the love we share, the love which binds us together, is more important than the producing and consuming and discovering and exploring.

If we listen, we can hear their voices and remember that the wounds we inflict and receive, the fear we experience and incite does not need to have power over us. That we can repair and heal … that we can be repaired and healed.

We do not worship our ancestors, but neither do we discard them. We remember them. We listen to them. We learn from them. We let them humble us.

The Hopi people were right. When the Grandmothers speak, the Earth will heal.

This All Saints Day, and always as an All Saints community, may we have ears to hear.

Reflection on All Saints Day by All Saints’ Rector Mike Kinman. Originally published in the November 2018 issue of Saints Alive, our monthly parish magazine.