Tonight at the Salem Women's Guild, we celebrated All Saints' Day, remembering friends and family who had passed on. We read the 23rd Psalm, lit some candles, and said a prayer.
It's typically a moving service, so moving in fact that I thought I'd let you in on the deal.
Join me below the fold.
Here's the prayer we said, adapted a bit:
Eternal One, make us this day to remember
the unseen cloud of witnesses who compass us about:
those who in ever age and generation
witnessed to their faith in life and in death;
those who by their courage and their sacrifice
who for us the freedom and the liberty we enjoy;
those who served their sisters and brothers
at the cost of pain, of persecution and of death;
those for whom all the trumpets sounded
as they passed over to the other side;
those whom we have loved and who have gone to be with you,
and whose names are writeen on our hearts.
Help us to walk worthily of those
in whose unseen presence life is lived.
Help us to have in our lives
their courage in danger;
their steadfastness in trial;
their perseverance in difficulty;
their loyalty when loyalty is costly;
the love which nothing can change;
their joy which nothing can take away.
So grant us in your good time to share with them the blessedness
of your nearer presence, that we also may come to that life,
where all the questions are answered;
where all the tears are wiped away;
where all shall meet again, never to be separated from them,
those whom we have loved and lost awhile;
where we shall be forever.
So grant to us in this life never to forget those who have gone before,
so that in the life to come we may share their blessedness.