Greeting Friends of God,

I feel like I should begin with “I’m baaaaaaaack,” but that sounds so ominous. Anyway, The Almond Tree is here again either for bird cage liner or personal edification or both. I might add that if you do use it for both, reading it and then using it as birdcage liner is much easier than the other way around. Just saying.
I wish you a blessed All Saints Day (yesterday) and All Souls Day (today). Let us take a moment today to re-member ourselves to those persons who are or have been bearers of the Mystery for us, channels of God’s love, conduits of justice or joy, instruments of kindness and compassion, embodied signs of decency and integrity, men and women who have cared for us, inspired us, comforted us, encouraged us, and/or challenged us. Some of these people we know or knew up close and personal. Others we have never known personally. Yet through family tales, or stories from our faith community, or from our studies in school, or through the writings, art, music or work of these people, our lives have been touched and enriched.

It is no accident that the gospel chosen for the Feast of All Saints is the Beatitudes as recorded in Matthew, Chapter 5. The saints, of course, are not limited to those men and women who are selected in the bureaucratic papal process in Rome, but rather include all the living and dead “friends of God” to use Elizabeth Johnson’s descriptive nomenclature. Mindful that divine-human friendship predates Facebook, it is fair to say that the reading from Mt. 5: 1-12 suggests that saints are those men and women who intentionally, consciously, and regularly “friend” God. The Beatitudes, counter-cultural as they are, also suggest that God takes special care to bless or “friend” anyone whose lives are marked by a curriculum vitae that flies in the face of the kind that the dominant culture recognizes, promotes, celebrates, and rewards.

The friends of God are those among us and those who have “gone before us marked with the sign of faith” whose lives are living beatitudes. Their curriculum vitae, their course or way of life, is not a list of accomplishments but rather a selection or litany of virtues not received at birth but rather fired in the daily struggle to face into and live well the sorrowful, joyful, glorious, and illuminative mysteries that come our way. Unlike hereditary attributes, these virtues (if I can risk using such a misunderstood, dusty-old word) are conscious dispositions, attitudes, actions, and life choices that require great humility, courage, and trust in the friendship of God.

Let us re-member ourselves to these persons in gratitude. Let us re-member these persons to God with thanks for the dignity, perseverance, and example of their lives. Let us regularly practice “friending” God who friends us in Jesus.

REFLECTION / PRACTICE:

With a grateful heart, take a moment to re-member yourself to—

♦Someone poor in spirit:

♦Someone who mourned or grieves deeply:

♦Someone meek:

♦Someone who hungered and thirsted for justice:

♦Someone who is merciful:

♦Someone pure of heart:

♦Someone who makes peace:

♦Someone persecuted for the sake of justice:

Rejoice and be glad for knowing these friends of God. May their living continue to bless, inspire, and challenge us to respond to the ongoing invitation and privilege to become human and holy. In humility and delight, may they encourage us to be friends of God.

in friendship,
dan