Sunday reflection for All Saint's Day (1st November 2015)

The medieval church and followers of old pagan religions had a battle over who would celebrate what at the Autumn equinox which resulted in the largely secular festival of Hallow'een yesterday (this being short of All Hallow's eve, e.g. the day before All Saints Day) while the church commemorates this as All Souls' day.

Today is set aside by the chuch as All Saints' day.

It is a good thing to set time aside to remember those we loved and who have died: to be grateful for the things they did for us.

It is also a time when we will feel grief at that parting. Sometimes that can be very cruel.

If there is a God and a life after death, we can hope that our dead loved ones are with Him. If not, they are at peace. Either way, they will know no more pain and suffering.

Comments

Jim said…
As an atheist, with no belief in gods (any of them) or even so much life after death, in the conventional sense.

I do like this Sunday reflection. You see, to me anyway, we do sort of have an afterlife, even if not in the way you may first want to think of it.

We live on in the memory of the people we leave behind, we leave the world (usually) in a slightly better, or a slightly worse state than we found it. Some people have a far greater impact than others, but each of us do that to at the very least a tiny little part of it.

No one who reads this will personally know Carlisle Spedding, but the work he done in Whitehaven whist he was alive will echo thoughout Whitehaven for years and years to come. No one knew or can personally remember Henry VIII, or Genghis Khan but they left the world a different place too.

that is our afterlife, at least to me, and its up to us in the time we have to decide how we want to be remembered and to make the steps to make that happen.

Now even if i am wrong and there is the conventional afterlife, its still worth leaving that legacy here in this life. Once again its a Win/Win
5:40 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
I agree with that. One of my aunts, who I never heard express an opinion for or against religion as such, once put a similar thought into words along the lines of

"When you go, you leave a lot of yourself behind in the memories of the people who loved you."

And as you say, that is true whether there is an afterlife in the conventional religious sense or not.
12:54 am
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