All Saints Day

Today is All Saints Day in the liturgical calendar and I found a wonderful litany of saints that is chanted at St. Stephen and the Incarnation church in Washington, DC. It is a wonderful, activist church that is always in the forefront of any right minded movements. They were the first integrated church in Washington and have always been very involved in civil rights, women’s rights, community service, etc. The first woman priest to ever celebrate the Eucharist in an Episcopal church in the US did it at St. Stephen’s. They even offer the church floors for traveling protesters to sleep on! Just exactly the kind of church I’d like to belong to!

The litany of saints that is chanted every year on this day truly has scope. Among MANY others, they include:
John the baptizer, map-maker of the Lord's coming
Teresa of Avila
Louis, king of France
Margaret, queen of Scotland
Gandhi the mahatma, reproach to the churches
Dag Hammarskjold the bureaucrat
Luke the physician
Francis who kissed the leper
Florence Nightingale
Albert Schweitzer
Johann Sebastian Bach
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Benjamin Britten
Duke Ellington
Johnny Appleseed, mad planter of Eden
Sojourner Truth, pilgrim of justice
Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, shot in the South
Martin Luther King, shot in Memphis

Now THAT is a veritable army of saints to call to stand beside you in a struggle with the world and the devil!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and shiver-filled Halloween. Ours was a race to the finish. We got the last pumpkin carved and set out about 15 minutes before the first little ghouly dropped by and shouted “Trickertreat!”. Our day did NOT go as scheduled! No surprise there – expecting this family’s days to go without mishap is like expecting a politician to tell the truth. The Child has been living at home since April, while still paying rent on a house that she was supposed to have been sharing. Cannot go into all the issues here in public (tho’ in private, I could burn up the computer), but her obligation is finally over soon, we hope, and so we went to help her repaint her room yesterday morning. It took two coats instead of one and longer than we thought, so we were there most of the day. I left early to come home and clean out three pumpkins and set out the Halloween luminaria (just little plastic pumpkins with kitty litter and a votive in the bottom). The Child and Mr. Kim finally turned up, spattered and damp, and carved theirs, too.

We are so nuts that we actually exchange cards and gifts for Halloween (though we can’t be the only ones for the cards at least – Hallmark was full of them). Mr. Kim gave me the little orange tealight holders with fuzzy black bats:


The Child gave me a portrait of this respectable, staid matron:


With a spooky surprise when you walk past:


Mr. Kim’s pumpkin:




Mine:




And The Child’s – the crowning achievement of the evening:



A freehanded Oogie Boogie!

Our yard makes for the perfect Haunted House – with the scritchy leaves, the exposed tree roots, the cobwebs in every window and the uneven walkway slates that teeter and threaten to upend you:






We even had a handsome greeter:

drawn to the window by the shrieks of the children and the hooting of our resident owl!

We had a nice bunch of visitors – witches and ghosts and princesses and even one wee UPS man! A tiny Dorothy stopped by and was delighted when I showed her my new cake plate. She marveled at the red shoes and blue gingham skirt and basket – “Just like MINE”.

We will leave the decorations up for another week and then put out the few things that we have for Thanksgiving. We do our big holiday gathering on Christmas Eve and I cook and decorate for weeks. So Thanksgiving is low key – just gratitude and a simple meal. Usually someone invites us to share their meal. This year we’ve been invited to Mr. Kim’s mother’s. I’m hoping that Momma and Ted will be able to join us. That will be gratitude, indeed, them being well enough to come up!

Happy November!