heartbreak and Holy Days

It's All Saints' day and West Virginia University's football team lost to TCU on a field goal as time expired, 31-30.

My favorite Holy Day and heartbreak all in one.

One reason I love being an Episcopalian is that we celebrate Holy Days. I like the idea that days are 'holy' somehow and that we mark them by celebrating the lives of saints and martyrs and people who have made great contributions to the quality of life on the planet.

And All Saints' Day is my favorite Holy Day by far--more than Easter and Christmas even--because it is my day, your day, 'our' day. On All Saints' we celebrate our contributions to the quality of life on the planet. All Saints' Day is about you and me as well as people who lived exemplary lives we should seek to emulate and mostly don't.

All Saints' Day (or as it was called centuries ago, "All Hallows"--thus, "Halloween", the eve of "All Hallows") celebrates all the 'saints' of God--dead, living and not yet born. All of us who call ourselves after Jesus...Christ-ians.

The great image I almost always invoke in my All Saints' Day or All Saints' Sunday, is the image of an altar rail that stretches out to eternity in both directions. I remind people what as we come to the rail for communion, we can look to our left and imagine all the Christians who came before us and to our right and imagine all the Christians who are not yet born and realize the 'communion of saints' is exactly that: the dead, the living, the unborn who gather in Christ's name.

WVU is ranked 20th in the country. TCU is ranked 7th. That will change after today's game--but imagine this: WVU led the whole game until that last kick as time ran out. Talk about heartbreak....