All Saints and All Souls: Generous Heart, Columbus

All Saints and All Souls: Generous Heart, Columbus

“In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a pocket handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.

Many people think of saints as plaster saints —men and women of such paralyzing virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or committed an evil deed their whole lives long. As far as I know, real saints never even come close to characterizing themselves that way.”–Frederick Buechner initially published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words. 

Buechner reminds us that being a saint is less about being ourselves and more about the way God, for some reason, works through and redeems the mess of our lives. November 1 is All Saints Day, when we remember the saints of the church who have died. November 2 is All Souls Day, when we remember all the faithful departed.

 I cannot help but remember Columbus, well known in the recovery community in Little Rock, Arkansas, only by his first name. Every year, usually early in the morning on the anniversary of your sobriety, you receive a phone call from Columbus. You wait in anticipation for that call, celebrating one more year of an alternative life with someone you knew only over the phone.

Columbus’s wife of forty-six years would leave him three times before he entered his final rehabilitation, after many DWIs, missed work, and days when she admitted she did not know where he was. Columbus died in the thirty-eighth year of his sobriety and was credited with leading thousands of men and women worldwide to sobriety.

Columbus made 15,000 calls a year and almost half a million calls before his death. He also called people he knew were no longer in recovery, telling them he cared about them. As a result, many people say they returned to recovery because of Columbus.

Columbus’ wife described his change during his recovery as “truly unbelievable. He became a dedicated and involved father and grandfather after he came so close to losing his family.”

When I hear people ask what they could do to make a difference in the world, I tell them Columbus’s story: one man with a generous heart, picking up the phone every day to change lives with a simple call. One day at a time. 

This may be how saints live. They are resurrection people. They know all too well what Good Friday is like. Yet God continues to change them and the world, one day, one phone call at a time.  

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

All Saints Day

 All Saints Day

St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church David Sanger

Guest Writer: Karen Dubert

All Saints’ Day: a Crowd of Saints  2020

 “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation.”— Rev 7:9.

My solitude of social distance is suddenly congested

by reminders of the great cloud:

that crowd of witnesses huddled over there in eternity,

peering into time

from vast margins of timelessness,

voids of space.

How is it that we eternal beings—

embedded in time,

prehistoric insects in amber—

How is it we so obsess over the amber

that we imagine ourselves the focus?

We sing of saints “who from their labours rest”

possibly imagining

eternity as an endless “rest" of watching us—

Dreary infinitude.

This amber chamber in which we live and move and be

confounds, imprisons us

defining our vision

regulating our expression;

so we envision the ancestors of millennia

eagerly peering over each other’s shoulders

to catch glimpses of us—

“the living ones”

The irony catches in my throat,

a log hung up on the flotsam of a cosmic flood.

That our amber-vision defines us

rather than enabling us

to gaze beyond and marvel that

out of here, somewhere

amberlessness means

movement.

(revised 2 Nov 2021)

Karen Dubert

Grace Chapter Daughters of the King at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, will lead a prayer vigil on Election Day, November 3, 2026. The chapel at Saint Mark’s will be open for prayers from 8:30 a.m. after Morning Prayer to 5:00 p.m.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Gibran: On Children, Steady Bow, Smorgasbord

Gibran: On Children, steady Bow, Smorgasbord

“Your children are not your children.

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

  — Khalil Gibran, “On Children” in The Prophet (1923).

Gibran’s poem may offer some of the best advice on relating to our children. Parents are to be the steady or stable “bow.” Our children do not belong to us. They are the most treasured guests we will ever have in our home.

phyllis raney

Another piece of wisdom came from a counselor, Phyllis Raney, who led a parenting class at our church. She told us our job was to provide the best smorgasbord of experiences for our children to sample. What they choose, however, is up to them. We are to be the best possible providers of opportunities for them to experience, but we cannot control their decisions about what they choose.

promises to Peter

We have three children, and as parents, we led busy lives as physicians at a children’s hospital. We wondered how to give each of our children quality one-on-one time. At the birth of our second child, my mother-in-law, Elizabeth, gave me a book, Promises to Peter (Word Books, 1974), by Charlie Shedd. We read about taking each child out to dinner one night a week. We let the child choose the restaurant, within reason. So, one night a week, usually Monday, was “date night” with one of our children. It was a gift to focus on letting that child tell their story without distractions and to show how much we loved them. 

We also attended many medical meetings each year and tried to bring one child with us, hoping to spend quality one-on-one time. These trips were one more offering on the smorgasbord.

Our children are older now, with their own children. It is easier to be the steady bow.

The steady bow image has now also become a symbol of our relationship with God. First, we learned about it as we tried to raise our children. Now, it is teaching us more about how God cares for us. The smorgasbord has become a symbol of the innumerable ways God provides for us. We learn more about this One who loves both “the arrows and the stable bow.”

Joanna    https://www.joannaseibert.com/