Sermon for All Saints 2017

“Shining in the gift of our family”

            I remember:  There were just a handful of people at the visitation and at this particular funeral

            Two of them were adults with Downs’ syndrome.  One was a member of our congregation who was 101 years old.

             Just a handful of people, and her family was small, just her son and daughter and their children and grandchildren. 

            But her children told me some things I didn’t know (it’s always like this) – that she had actually borne five children.  One was a daughter borne with cerebral palsy.  Another was a son born with a hole in his heart.  He died when he was 9 months old.  Another was a little boy who had Downs syndrome.  Her daughter remembered that he was often sick and died when he was very young. 

            So much grieving in her life.  I think of her today, on All Saints Sunday, when I think about that small gathering.  She is one of the people I remember.  But not just her. 

            I remember my friend Melissa’s son, lost in the Mississippi River.  I remember my dad, who had Parkinsons. 

            And I remember Charles, who was a music teacher and who had Alzheimers and lost the ability to speak. 

            I remember Al Weddle and Sharla Biehl and Janet Faraone, and I remember my grandmothers Emma and Judy, and my father-in-law George, and how

             – when he invited us out to dinner, always said, “Order whatever you like!” 

            I remember Ella Brekke  and her well-worn Bible, and how her family drove through a blizzard to get to her funeral.

            Who do you remember?  That’s what All Saints Sunday is for.  It is for remembering.  Isn’t it? 

 

             All saints Sunday.  Every year we gather and we light candles and say names and we remember. 

            And that is what we mean by “All Saints Sunday.” 

            It is a day when we remember the saints among us, the saints who are no longer among us.   But even saying that, it seems odd.  Saint. 

            it’s an odd word to say.  What is a saint?  Are YOU a saint? 

            I asked this question at the Assisted Living Center on Wednesday.  And you know what? 

            No one there thought that they were saints. 

            Maybe because they thought that a saint had to be a lot holier than they were. 

            Maybe because they thought that you could only be a saint after you die.  But for whatever reason, they didn’t think they were saints.   

            What is a saint?   And what does it mean to be blessed?

             I think of the list in our gospel reading from Matthew.  

            The word ‘saint’ doesn’t appear anywhere in this passage, but we read it often on All Saints Sunday, and some have come to believe that these passages somehow describe saints. 

            “Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Blessed are the merciful.”  

            Blessed.  This word appears over and over.   Blessed.  

            And the word blessed is used with some pretty odd statements, if you think about it.    Would we ever – for example – say that someone who is grieving is blessed? 

            How about those meek?  How are they ‘blessed”? 

            And poor in spirit—I’ll confess that even after all these years of studying I’m still not exactly sure what it means to be poor in spirit. 

            But it doesn’t sound like a positive thing.

             “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” 

            It’s sort of like saying, “Blessed are the failures.”  Blessed are those with low self-esteem.  Blesssed are the needy. 

            Those would not be the blessings of our culture.  

            We would say instead, blessed are the successful who had made it on their own! 

            Blessed are the popular!  Blessed are those who never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from! 

            Not “blessed are the needy.” 

            But what is a saint?  We remember them today.  Maybe we want to be a saint. 

            Maybe we are sure that we are the farthest from sainthood.  Martin Luther said that we were both. 

            Both saints and sinners at the same time.    And blessed.  We are blessed.  And so we remember.

            Today is a day for remembering.  It is a day for remembering the saints, famous or ordinary, holy and imperfect.

            It is a day for remembering the stories of people in our lives, those who lived long lives, those who died too soon. 

            And it is a day to know that we too are saints, we too are blessed, we are the needy and the poor in spirit – we are the ones who mourn and need comfort. 

            We are God’s imperfect holy ones, saint and sinner at the same time, called to reflect the mercy of God, called to reflect the grace of God. 

            Today is a day for remembering – not just the people, and not just the stories, but the promises too. 

            Today is a day for remembering the promises of God that those who grieve will be comforted, that the meek will inherit the earth, that the merciful will receive mercy. 

            Today is a day to remember the promises of God that the poor will be lifted up, and the dead will be raised, and the hungry will be fed.          Today is a day to remember that we live by those promises.  That’s what it means to be a saint.  

            To trust God’s promises.  

            To trust God’s goodness, rather than your own.  To know that the light you shine is the light of Christ.

            All of the people I named before:  I saw the light of Christ in them.            I saw the light of Christ in my dad, and my father-in-law, in Emma and Judy, in Al and Janet and Sharla. 

            I saw the light of God  in Jean and in Jan, in Melissa’s son Chris, in Charles  and in Ella and in so many others.

             I saw the light of Christ in them, not in their perfection, but in their humanity, in their weakness, in their need. 

            In whom has the light of Christ shined for you? 

            Who showed you Jesus?   Who showed you the wideness of the love of God, the depth of the grace of God, the breadth of the compassion of God?

            Esther.  That was her name.  the one with the small family.

             At her funeral there were just a handful of people.

             Just her two adult children, and their children and grandchildren.           And two adults with Downs Syndrome, and a member of the church who was 101 years old.  After all,  She had a small family.  But she showed me Jesus.

           

            She showed me Jesus and she showed me that despite what I could see – she did not have a small family. 

            That is another thing we remember on All Saints Sunday. 

            We remember the stories and we remember the promises, and we remember that by those promises of God, we have been given a gift – the gift of one another. 

            We have been given the gift of all of those who have gone before us and all those who will come after us, all of those who are here, and all of those who are not here – all of those claimed by the promise, living in the Grace of the crucified one.   

            See what love the father has given us

            That we should be called children of God.

            And that is what we are.

            That is what we are.

            Let your light so shine before others

            That they may see your good works

            And give glory to your father in heaven.

            AMEN

           

Reading the Bible in Church

Today was All Saints Sunday in Church.  We did many things in church.  We sang, we prayed, I preached.  We opened our hands and received communion.  We even said, "Christ is risen!"  We lit candles to remember those in our lives who had been saints to us, who had reflected the light of Christ to us.

And, we read from the Bible.

We read from the Bible every Sunday at church.

But today it felt different.

I felt the weight of the appointed Gospel, from Jesus' Sermon on the Plain.  It is appointed for All Saints Sunday, but this year I didn't preach on the gospel.  I preached on being a saint, and I preached on being a witness, but I didn't preach on these particular words.

But I read them, because they were the words of the appointed gospel for today.

Two days before our National Election, I read the blessings and the woes.  Blessed are you who are poor.  Woe to you who are rich.  Blessed are you when you are reviled, and people speak ill of you.

And then, three little words:

Love your enemies

I don't know what my congregation heard when I said these words.  I felt time slow down while I said them.  "Love your enemies,  and do good to those who persecute you."

I felt like Jesus was speaking them directly to me.

They were words not just for the election, but for how to live afterwards.  I am not sure that it is possible, but I am certain that it is necessary.   Love your enemies.  I don't think that means, "Let your enemies walk all over you."  It also doesn't mean, "Let your enemies get away with evil."  It also doesn't mean "Show contempt for your enemies."

"Love your enemies."

I opened the Bible and the words of Jesus exploded in my face.

They made me consider again what it will mean, and what it might cost to be a follower of Jesus, in such a time as this.

Witnesses

Tomorrow is All Saints Sunday in my congregation.  I love this Sunday, for many reasons.  I love lighting the candles.  I love remembering.  I love saying the names and knowing some of the stories of the particular saints in my own congregation.

I don't know why it has never occurred to me before how close All Saints is to Election Day.  But on Sunday I will be naming names and lighting candles and talking about the hope and witness of the saints.  On Tuesday it will be Election Day.  Many have already cast their vote, or will cast their vote.      

To be perfectly honest, this election feels different for me.  There have always been negative ads.  There has always been passion.  There have always been both hope and fear.  But it feels different this time.  Fear seems to have the edge over hope.  We are witnesses, but what are we witnessing?

Maybe a better question is this:  What do we hope for?

Tomorrow is All Saints Sunday, and as I light the candles, I will think of the hope of the saints.  I will consider the hope of the saints as the hope for a better city, a place of abundance, where the table is set, where all will be fed, where all will recognize the beauty and value of the children of God.

But the hope of the saints is not limited to that better city.  That hope lights my way right now, even when fear grips me.  The hope means that whatever happens on Tuesday, I will live hoping for a world where the poor are blessed, where the weak are protected, where there is enough for the hungry.  I will live looking for ways to provide shelter for the homeless and for the refugee.

Tomorrow I will light the candles.  And remember that I am a witness too:  I am a witness not to any particular political candidate, but to the love of God.  Every candle is a witness:  against fear, but mostly -- for the victory of God.

Sunday Sermon for All Saints

This week my challenge was to weave together the themes of All Saints Sunday and of Reaching out to Welcome the Stranger (part of our fall theme).  Here's what I came up with....

A long while ago, I live for a year in a Big White Three-Story House in inner City Denver, along with 10 other people --- none of whom I had ever met before.  It was the year I was doing my seminary internship, and I lived in something called a "Community House", along with young people from all over the country, as well as one exchange student from Japan.  We were all there to serve, but in different places, and for different reasons.  We each had our own space, but we shared meals twice a week, and took turns cooking, and also go together on occasion for other social events.  As you can imagine, we had some great times together, and also some times when things didn't go so well.

An then there was this day -- when we got a phone call from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.  They wondered if we had space to temporarily house about twelve people who were refugees from Russia.  They had just arrived -- and we had this Big White Three-Story House -- what did we think?  It wouldn't be for very long----

We said yes.

So they were coming over, and we were going to have dinner together.

It was my night to cook.  And I'll tell you a little secret -- I don't cook for 23 -- especially on short notice.  So I had to get someone to talk me through the meal preparation for that evening.

Finally everyone arrived.  I had managed to get dinner cooked.  We found places for everyone to sit and we were just getting ready to eat --  when we found that there was another dilemma.  What would we use for a table prayer?  We did not speak Russian.  They did not speak English.  But we had to pray, didn't we?

****

So today we celebrate All Saints Day.  It's a day we remember the saints who have gone before us -- it's  the day we remember the saints who have been important in our lives.  -- and it's a date when we remember what a saint is:  after all, a saint is someone who has lived trusting Jesus, hoping in the life he promises us, and holding on to the vision of his reign. One of the promises that we hold on to, one of the central visions that we see is this one from Isaiah 25:  the mountain of the Lord, with all of the people streaming to it, and the great banquet that awaits us there.  What is the hope of the saints?  It's the banquet table filled to the brim, the feast of victory, the great celebration where we will all be re-united, and where there will be abundance of food, and abundance of fellowship.  This is a wonderful image of our hope, and a wonderful vision of the saints -- to imagine those people who we will name shortly sitting around this table together, isn't it?  To imagine our friends Chuck and Vernon and Mark and Shane, Jeanette and Clarence and Mae and Harriet  --- and well, all of the others, sitting and celebrating at this table together, with Jesus the host.

Except that one thing is missing from this vision -- it is the names of all of the people we don't know, all of the saints who are strangers to us, all of the people who maybe aren't even saints yet, because they haven't heard of known to trust Jesus with their lives.  But the vision from Isaiah, if we really hear it and imagine it, is wider than that -- the vision talks about all nations being drawn to the mountain of God, all nations coming together at the banquet -- not just friends, but strangers, too.  So we have to adjust our vision, on All Saints Sunday, to see the wideness of God's reach.

Sometimes adjusting means that our vision gets wider, but sometimes it means getting smaller, just for a moment.  Like that tiny story from Mark, of Jesus healing the leper.  The leper was probably a stranger to Jesus, for many reasons -- probably just because he was a leper, and lepers were supposed to stay far away from everyone else.  But he calls out to Jesus, wondering if Jesus wants to heal him, and Jesus reaches out his hand and touches him.  This is an amazing action, for many reasons.  For Jesus to be close enough to touch a leper -- is to risk being contaminated, to risk being associated with him.  But he did it.  And the leper was healed, and he could against be a part of a community -- no longer a stranger. Jesus healed him.

We still don't know that leper's name.  He's a stranger.  But I imagine that he's a saint, too.  He's a saint simply because Jesus reached out to him.  Even though Jesus told him to be quiet, he went out and told people anyway.  Pretty soon, the people were streaming to Jesus.  Some of them came for healing.  Maybe some of them came just to be touched.  And maybe some of them came just because they didn't want to be a stranger, any more.

Father Greg Boyle, a priest who works with gangs in South L.A., slays it this way.  He says, "There is no them and us.  There is only us."  -- In God's eyes anyway.  It's not often that we see it.  Most of the time we fit ourselves into categories:  them and us, friends and strangers, rich and poor, young and old, "good" and "bad."  Most of the time we divide ourselves, but to God we are all the same:  "There is no them and us.  There is only us."  We are all beloved, and of infinite value.  And we all need to be healed, we all need to be fed, we need someone to know our name.

We don't catch a glimpse of it often, but on this All Saints Sunday, I hope, for a moment, we catch a glimpse -- of the saints and the strangers, standing around the throne of the Lamb, seated at the banquet table.  We don't know their names, but we know they are wounded, grieving, hungry, lonely.  We know they need someone to reach out to them -- because they are like us, and we need someone to reach out to us, too.  They are hungry, too, but maybe we don't speak the same language.  How can we pray together?  Saints and strangers, this is what unites us:  our common hunger, our common value to God

****

So there we were, all together, waiting to each dinner.  Who would pray?  What would we say?  Whatever it was, we know that half of the room would not understand what the other half was saying, at least not with our minds.  After an awkward pause, I asked the Japanese woman, Kayoko, to teach us a prayer in Japanese.  Then we would at least be all on the same level:  no one but Kayoko would know what it meant.  So she taught us this pray, or sang it to us:

"Hibi no kate wo Atetamo
Megumi no Mikami Wa Homu beki kana.  A-men.

So, saints and strangers -- today we give thanks for the feast that is being prepared for all people.  We give thanks for the God who reaches out to us to heal us and to draw us to him.  And we give thanks, because God is teaching all of us a new language, one that none of us is very fluent in yet, but God is teaching us the words, and even singing them, for us, and with us.  God is teaching us a new language, a new Word, and the Word is Jesus, and the Word is Love.  If you listen hard, you can hear just a piece of it:

"Be present at our tables, Lord
Be here and everywhere adored
These mercies bless and grant that We
May feast in paradise with Thee.  Amen"

"Blessed Saints" -- a funeral sermon for Harriet Wrolstad

I meant to post this back in April

I thought I knew Harriet Wrolstad pretty well:  she was one of the first people I met when I arrived here several years ago, and she didn't waste much time having me over to her house for coffee.  Perhaps it was because at the time, we were both single women; perhaps it was the fact that I had lived in Japan for a while.  Whatever it was, I thought I knew Harriet pretty well, but in these last few months I discovered something I hadn't known before, a devotional practice that she had:  every day she would always take the time, usually before she went to bed, to recite ten blessings.  I discovered this because Cathie made sure that I knew, so that I could do this with her when she was at the Augustana Home and at Mount Olivet Care Center.  Perhaps some of you who visited her also took the time to name ten blessings of the day.  I remember that she often named her friends and family -- and her birthday -- and her home -- among her chief blessings, although there was one time in December we had to give thanks for a Christmas present, a nice box of chocolates.

Today we are gathered to say goodbye to our sister in Christ, Harriet.  We are here to celebrate her life and to mourn her death, to name the blessings that came our way because she was in our life.  We are here to remember the promises of God for her, to give thanks for her presence with us, and to grieve her absence from us.  One of my favorite writers, Gerhard Frost, once said that to mourn for someone is to pay them a great compliment; it is to give meaning and significance to their life.  So, today, we say about Harriet, "You were an important person in my life.  I'm different because I knew you."

So today we give thanks:  of the pastor's daughter from Granite Falls who ended up traveling all over the world.  We give thanks for a sister, daughter, aunt godmother and friend respected businesswoman and volunteer. We give thanks for Harriet's work with the Ebenezer Auxiliary, where she insisted that they sing "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," because of the line in verse 2 -- "Here I Raise My Ebenezer".  By the way, the word "Ebenezer", which always causes many people to wonder, means "stone of help," and is a story from the 1st book of Samuel.  It is a story of how the Israelites returned to God after a period of wandering, and how God gave them victory over their enemies, the Philistines.  To remember this victory, and God's help, the judge Samuel had the people set up a stone -- called Ebenezer -- to remind them of God's victory, God's faithfulness to them.   (There was a stone for each person who came to the luncheon.)

Today we give thanks for Harriet -- who would think to have a stone for each of us to carry back home with s today so that we can remember that God is faithful to us.  That was the teacher in her, I suppose, I didn't know this, but she did teach English for a few years before she started her long career at Northwest Airlines.  We give thanks for Harriet -- who valued education and wisdom, faith and learning, Norwegian and Lutheran heritage, family, friends, colleagues.  We give thanks for Harriet, who was generous, loyal and opinionated, and who let me know more than once that she valued smartness in a pastor more than she valued niceness.  We gives thanks for Harriet, who was faithful here in worship on Sunday morning and for Wednesday matins, and who counted her blessings.  We give thanks for Harriet -- who was proud of the fact that she was the only employee of Northwest Airlines to have stayed overnight in every city to which the airline flew.

She was part of the communion of saints throughout the world, but, unlike many of us, she got to experience a little bit of it, and she LOVED to tell stories about it.  And I think Harriet would say that she was blessed, not just blessed by world travel and opportunities, but blessed by friends and family -- and faith.  She was blessed to be able to I've in Granite FAlls and in Tokyo, she was blessed in large ways and in small ways.

***

To be blessed -- to be a saint -- it's the same thing:  did you know that?  So if you are ever at a loss to describe what a saint is, here's the absolute truth:  A saint is someone who is blessed.  It's why we read the Beatitudes on All Saints Sunday.  Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the merciful.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Blessed... when Jesus first spoke these words, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, some of them might have been a great shock to the people who heard them.  They would be thinking that you could tell those who were blessed by their material abundance, by the ease of their lives, by their success in worldly terms.  But Jesus spoke and began ty lifting up the poor in spirit.  I like how another translation puts it:  "Blessed are those who know they need God."  They are the saints.

Saints are the ones who knows they need God, who know they need the word of God, who know they need the promises of God in their lives.  Saints are the ones whose stomachs are growling for a good word from God, and who are thirsty for the water only God can give.

A long while ago I visited with an old woman from my congregation.  She was dying, and I came to give her communion.  This woman was mostly past speaking at this point.  She would fall asleep, and we would wake her up again.  We read scripture and said prayers.  And after communion, I raised my arms and I said the benediction,  "May the Lord bless you and keep you/ May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you/ May the Lord look upon you with favor/And give you peace."  And this woman looked up at me with a twinkle in her eye, and she said, "he did!"  The Lord DID bless me and keep me all these years, she said.  The Lord had blessed her through the hard years of the depression, and even in the time of the death of one of her children.  The Lord had blessed her in times through times of scarcity and times of abundance.  The Lord had blessed her.

She was a saint.

She was part of the communion of saints -- and so was Harriet and so are you and me.  We are blessed. We are blessed not because of anything we have done and not because of anything we have accomplished, but because of God's goodness to us in Christ Jesus.  We are blessed whether we have traveled around the world or spent most of our lives in Granite Falls, because of Christ's victory over death for us.  We are blessed whether we are wise or foolish, in our grieving and in our joy.  We are blessed because Jesus came here, and walked among us, healing and forgiving and feeding us.  We are blessed because Jesus gave his body and blood for us.  We are blessed because he is our "Eben-ezer", or stone of help, forgiving us and giving us new life again and again.

We are blessed because we are here today, singing together and praying together (and later on, eating together) and because God has given us to one another.  And we are blessed because we will see one another again, when we gather at the throne of the Lamb, where our tears will be wiped away, where the table will be set, where God's arms will be open wide to us as they are open wide today to our sister Harriet.

Today, each day, we name ten blessings, the ones we can see:  a box of chocolate, Swedish meatballs, Norwegian coffee, faithful friends, a smooth stone, water.  Today we name ten blessings:  our homes, our families, our faith, the mercy of God.  But those are only the ones we can see with our eyes.  With the eyes of the heart, we can see many more, as the old Norwegian song so well expresses:

O Blessed saints, now take your rest;
a thousand times may you be blest.
For keeping faith firm unto death and scorning worldly trust
For now you live at home with God
and harvest seeds once cast abroad
in tears and sighs, See with new eyes
the pattern in the seed.
The myriad angels raise their song,
O saints, sing with that happy throng.
Lift up one voice, let heaven rejoice
to our redeemer's song.

Go with God Harriet Sophia.  May God's light ever surround you.

AMEN

Saint Audrey and Father Greg

I got a phone call from the hospital yesterday, telling about a parish member who has begun receiving hospice visits.   "She would like you to come and visit her," was the gist of the message.  So I called her and made an appointment to visit with her today.

When I reached her on the telephone, she greeted me, "I've been waiting for your call.  I would like to see you so much."  I felt an over-the-phone warm hospitality.  When I mentioned this woman to another member of our staff, we searched around for the right word to describe her.  Suddenly, it occurred to us.  She was a saint.

Today, when I sat down at her table, she grasped my hand and told me of her diagnosis.  "The thing is," she said, "I am not afraid.  I am not afraid.  I have been walking with Jesus my whole life.  Lately, I've been thinking, 'Soon and very soon, I am going to see the King.'" 

She smiled.  We talked some more.  I asked her about the years she spent in Nigeria, with an agricultural mission there.  She was an Anglican there, she told me, because there were no Lutheran churches, and the Baptists told her she could not take communion until she was baptized again.  She described the large lizards (they were beautiful, she said) and how they came into the church.  She spoke with pride about her nieces and nephews.  We shared communion.

This evening my husband and I went to a neighboring church to hear Father Greg Boyle speak about his work with gangs in Los Angeles.  I read his book last Thanksgiving time.  The stories shared reminded me about the depth and breadth and width of God's love.

The word tonight was "Kinship."  The truth is that we belong to one another, but, most of the time, we do not know it.  Most of the time we think there is a difference between those who have tattoos and those who don't, those who have jobs and those who don't, those who are 'good' and those who are 'bad,' those who are worthy and those who are worthless.  We think that there is a 'them' and an 'us.'  But there is only us.  Father Greg told us that our real work is "to create a community of kinship such that God would recognize it."  And he told us of moments when he caught a glimpse of such kinship:  between enemies who suddenly realized that they were friends, when gang members told their stories, when "the soul felt its worth."  He told us that the line from the Christmas Hymn "O Holy Night, "When he appeared and the soul felt its worth" is really a job description for all of us.  How do we help other people know how much they are worth to God?

Saint Audrey and Father Greg

both of you are practicing kinship, both of you are preaching the gospel, on the streets, at your kitchen table.   You have been walking with Jesus your whole lives.  You have let us catch a glimpse of him.

Thank you.

St. Lucia Day

Today is St. Lucia Day in Sweden. This day was part of the inspiration for our advent worship this year: Advent Saints. Last week, we talked about St. Nicholas. Last night, we had a couple of "Lucias" visit us during the church service.

One of the challenges this advent (besides designing the services, which the intern usually did) has been putting together the monologues and finding costumes for the "visitors" each week. Actually, the monologues have been pretty fun, and perhaps I'll share them with you (Sr. Pastor will write next week's, on Katherina von Bora, Luther's wife.)

So, on Tuesday, I found myself at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, buying two "Lucia Crowns" (inexpensive ones with battery powered lights) for our two young saints.

The American Swedish Institute is housed in an old mansion, built by Swedish immigrant Swan Turnblad at the turn of the last century. He had made a fortune managing a series of Swedish language newspapers. At that time (the Gilded Age) if you made a fortune, you had to build a mansion. Now it is a museum and gathering place for Swedes and others wanting to know more about Sweden and Swedish-American immigrants.

As a girl, I used to usher sometimes on a Saturday, greeting people at the door, and guiding them to the programs they were set to attend. I also sang in a children's chorus. However, I never got to be Lucia for the programs. There was one girl slightly older than me, taller, blonder, and more poised. I would see the wax dripping from her hair and envy her.

When I entered the building on Tuesday afternoon, I had the sense that I was going back in time -- back to those days when I suddenly became obsessed with my Swedish heritage, with my grandparents' immigrant past. I remembered my afternoons spent in the old museum, practicing songs, wandering the halls, wishing to be able to read the Swedish books. I remembered my grandmother, who died when I was 16, and her attempts to teach me a few words, and to tell me a little bit about who she was. I'm not sure we really knew.

She was proud to be an American. She was also proud to be Swedish, and she kept in touch with the family across the ocean. She came across that ocean by herself. So she must have been brave.

I didn't have much time on Tuesday. But after I bought the crowns, I stopped and got a cardomum roll, just for old times sake.

Picture is by Carl Larsson and is in the public domain

A short post about Saints

This is the quotation Husband and I discovered when we did the acrostic in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday:

"The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or testy, made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven."

P. McGinley, "Saint Watching"

How timely! I had never heard of this book.

But I learned all about it on another blog, which coincidentally turns out to be from Minnesota. For a few minutes, I entered another whole realm of the blogosphere (instead of going to bed).

Funny what you will learn doing puzzles in the Sunday New York Times.

Happy All Saints Day.