All Saints Day

Today is the first November first in many years that I haven't slept with my windows cracked. It comes from an older superstition that on All Saints Day, the souls of the dead pass through, and you have to be prepared for them. Today, I couldn't help but feel guilty that I couldn't go to mass, because there were probably only two masses here today, and I was either asleep, in class or working, while they were happening. I can't exactly acrue favors to go to church at a state run school. I miss my Catholic school, where there would have been a choice of quite a few masses, most of them probably with music and the unique flavor of each dorm.

I always loved all Saint's Day Masses because it was one of the few times of the year that the Litany of the Saints is sung. (The link is an especially good version, sung by a pair of beautiful baritones). To me, there was always something almost magical about calling the names of all these saints, and asking them to "Pray for us". I thought that if we repeated it enough times, the invocation would rise up with the burning incenses, and the words would have more power.

When I was a little girl, I believe there was magic in the Church, especially in the holidays. There was the swirl of incense in the air, and the solemnity of the occasion. The music would change, and the spaces would fill with the deep, reverberating vibrations. The priests would even sing the prayers, sometimes. I watched them transform the bread and wine into the body and blood, and somewhere in that space, the transformation would take place. By the time I was in college, I knew that we were no long standing around a small alter in a crowded dorm, where only the night before the people coming to the sacrifical alter were drinking or playing video games. Instead, I stood at the edge of a small upstairs room, watching a charasmatic man make promises.

I won't deny the mysticism, nor the magic that remains. Its a feeling thats only re-enforced by science. I look at the system I study, a single receptor on an ugly cell that floats in the blood, and wonder at how well the system works together...

Today and tomorrow, I both celebrate and mourn the people who have passed ahead of me... My maternal grandfather, my mother's Uncle George, My cousin's husband, Guillermo, my friend's baby, Gabriel. I trust that they are safely where ever they belong, and I ask them to remember me occasionally, as I remember them. I think this holiday is as much for the living as it is for anyone. I mean, we're the ones who need to remember.