Reverend Ann's Letter

November 2025

The whole of November in the church constitutes Kingdom Season. A time of remembering and recognising loss and grief.  It begins with All Saints, a celebration of all those saints who have walked before us in the way of faith.  This is followed immediately by All Souls, when we remember ‘the faithful departed’, those we have lost and no longer see.  Then, of course there is Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day.

Some of you I know are in the early stages of grief for a lost loved one, others will have lost someone many years ago, but the loss and the grief are still present, but somehow changed.  I often wonder if those souls are still somehow here, in a great diaspora of the dead and we see them most clearly at this time of year.

Because maybe the physics of love defies the binary gravity of grief.

Maybe all the love, joy and solace that comes from the relationships in our lives that are now in that past still form a connective tissue that hold and sustain us in ways that are sometimes easy to miss.

I wonder also about the grief the disciples felt. The ones who got to see the miracles with their own eyes, who heard the sound of Jesus’ voice when he first said Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name thy kingdom come thy will be done. I wonder what texture their grief took on - to have experienced something so astonishing only to have it feel like it all was just …. over.

But it wasn’t over. Obviously. Here we are 2,000+ years later still sitting at the same table as them sharing the same bread, the same cup. Telling the stories. Saying the Lord’s Prayer, hearing the Gospel.

Maybe all the love, creativity, hilarity, solace, and tenderness that we’ve ever known—every belly laugh, every whispered secret, every shared meal, every hand we’ve ever held in both joy and grief—maybe all of that is not actually gone.

Maybe it ends up forming the connective tissue in our lives, invisible but strong, like the ligaments that keep our bones from flying apart.

Not in a sentimental way. Not in the “everything happens for a reason” greeting-card- way. But in the God-is-sneaky kind of way. The way the Divine insists on taking what we thought was gone and fashioning it into a web of grace that keep us tethered, even when we don’t notice.

So if you’re still standing, it might not be because you’re strong. It might be because you are held together by the love you’ve received and the love you gave.

Maybe that’s what resurrection looks like; the people we mourn, the physics of their love is ineffable. It’s not dispelled - it’s dispersed.  It is reconfigured but never actually gone, because, like us, they are held in the arms of the one who loves them and us. We are  joined together in the Kingdom,the great throng of those beloved of God, saints, angels, all departed souls, and, yes, you and me as well….

Go well

Ann