There was a cemetery that I used to walk through looking at tombstones when I was a pastor in Maine. A friend showed it to me. She walked her dog there but now I run through cemeteries chasing my children on the way to the playground.

I’m not kidding. Our nearest park has two playgrounds on either side of a church’s very old, very historic cemetery. My girls ask lots of questions about these stones creeping out of the earth and so I’ve been thinking about how to engage more prayerfully with these stones. I need Google Translate to figure out what is happening on most of these stones but in this place are buried some wonderful, powerful saints.

I won’t take my children on that prayer walk though. I could but it’s something I want to do for my own heart and my own grief. I want something else for them and their experiences of loss. And so, though I didn’t plan on creating two prayerful resources for All Saints and All Souls, I did indeed create one for myself and one for my children.

For my girls, who love a good family dinner, I wrote Feast with the Saints. I explain in the opening pages that my husband is not a Christian and so I’m always looking for ways to make my faith real and accessible but not so churchy. He will squirm if I do. Then I squirm and the whole thing is ruined.

I want us to experience this feast together in a way that we can all participate and we can all talk about family. My girls are going to want to talk about our dog how died last year back in the USA while we are here in Germany. They are still putting the pieces together and trying to understand how this love goes on. Repeat (the dog) will be one of our saints named as we light the candles. There will also be my mom, my grandparents, and my husband’s grandmother who’s spirit lives on in my youngest.

There are menu suggestions within those pages pulled from dinners I’ve created for my family but I’ll likely ask what the girls want to make before I stack a pile of photo albums by the table along with the children’s Bible. This brief worship service is modeled on the open table experiences we shared at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York where a little food was shared and then a song would be sung and then some more food and then there would be conversation centered on the text of the day.

This particular worship experience is centered on Matthew 5:1-12 because I didn’t want to get anyone stuck on the woes in Luke’s Gospel. We know how to celebrate the things we love about the people we love. I wanted that to be focus as we try to remember what pushes us to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Somebody taught us that and it’s important to share that within our families. It’s something I’m eager to share with my girls and I needed some holy intention around my favorite observance of the church calendar.

There’s not a lot of liturgy in Feast with the Saints because I’m eager to focus on the meal and the conversation but I recognize there might be need for some more liturgy for some. And so, I recently shared these table prayers to add to the experience.

What I created for myself is more contemplative and quiet. It doesn’t make quite as much room for the many questions of children as I wanted a space for me. Those questions will still be there as I don’t stop parenting when I turn my heart to prayer but I wanted a space in Among Mortals to contemplate my own life and death. As a child of grief, I am well aware that I will die. That is not the question that is ever before me. What I struggle with most is how to live.

On All Saints Day, I want time alone with the saints — even if the ones I’m thinking about most are not buried in this particular spot — to feel the strange mystery of this time where we are more connected. Their world mingles with ours. Something needs to be revealed as I walk among the stones and wonder about what it means to live now.

This meditative walk begins with the following spin on Psalm 24.

This prayer leads to more questions and greater attention to this place and what it might hold. This is the power of prayer to me. I don’t know what will transpire for me or for you but I can lead us both to wonder how Revelation 21:1-6 might shift our awareness of this moment. Grief distorts our vision but we are asked to look again and see if God might be at home here too. I want us both to leave with a sense that God is indeed “making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). I’m hoping it refocuses our attention to what truly matters about being alive right now.

I hope both Among Mortals and Feast with the Saints are a blessing for those that choose them for their celebration on All Saints and All Souls. If you are looking for something just like this, you’ll find it in my shop on Dandelion Marketplace.