Good Morning Friends & Digital Neighbors! In Cath-O-Land today is the Feast of All Souls and praying for our beloved dead. Catholics are urged to pray for the dead everyday of the year, but today and the rest of November is a more intentional time. Even if you are not a member of Cath-O-Land, everyone has a relationship with the dead.
Love the, hate them, miss them or glad they are gone, everyone has someone on the list of their dead that they think about frequently, and in some cases pray for on the other side. Perhaps you hope they find mercy or justice, healing or retribution for the things left undone or unaddressed in their life.
For my Beloved Dead, I pray that they find healing and wholeness on the other side of the Veil. I pray they come to terms with their sins and brokenness of their life as well as the a refinement of the best of their traits that they possessed. Mom, Dad, Jerry & Jimmy along with a host of other people are on my daily list of people I lift up to Divine Mercy.
If you are not the praying type or a believer in the Divine and some sort of afterlife, I hope you have a friend with whom you can chat about your dead, beloved or damn glad they are gone. Trying to understand the whatness of past relationships is usually important if you want to move forward in either gratitude for the good people of your life or lessons learned from the evil-bad-selfish-crazy ones of your past. That spectrum seems to be the best way for me to understand the difficult people I have seen in life. Evil people need to be opposed, bad ones restrained, selfish ones avoided, and the crazy ones helped, treated or genteelly handled.
Whatever this day holds for you, celebrate life, honor the good, protect what is worthwhile and remember your beloved dead and shake the dust off of those who made your life difficult or miserable. Remembering the past is what it is for, living there is to forfeit your future more often than not. On to quotes and a photo - perhaps a autumn cemetery.
Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive. - Brian Clough
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. - Steve Jobs
Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them. - George Eliot
The Gettysburg National Cemetery in the Autumn
