November…we remember…

November is not my favourite month. The landscape all around us is becoming bare and bereft of colour. The days are shortening, the temperature is dropping, the last leaves are falling, leaving the trees bare and stark.

So, it is only natural that our thoughts turn to those we have loved and who have completed their journey on this earth and have now entered God’s timelessness.

During November, the call is to remember them, give thanks for them, honour their memory and celebrate the many ways they have blessed our lives:

“Everyone loves to be remembered. But if we want to be remembered, it is fitting that we also remember. Memory is a powerful thing. Wrongly used it can bring death rather than life. Rightly used, it is a form of immortality. It keeps the past alive.

Those we remember never die; they continue to live and talk with us. Their influence is still felt among us. There is nothing stronger or more helpful than a good remembrance. We remember all who have died, and their memory brings life to us today.”

                                                                                                  Flor McCarthy

Having reflected on Flor McCarthy’s words, you might like to spend some time remembering your loved ones.

We are all journeying through life. That journey begins at birth. But death is not the end of the journey, but a Departure for our Heavenly Home where we will live forever in the visible presence of God, as the Kerry mystic John Moriarty said:

“Death is not the end, the adventure has just begun.”

And Rabindranath Tagore reminds us that:

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

St. Paul wrote:

“No eye has seen nor ear heard the great things God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2 : 9)

May our loved ones who have experienced their earthy journey experience those great things in abundance, especially as we remember them during these November days.

The leaves are falling, falling as from afar,

As though above were withering farthest gardens;

They fall with a denying attitude.

And night by night, down into solitude.

The heavy earth falls from every star.

We are all falling too –

All have this falling sickness none withstands.

And yet there’s One whose gently-holding hands

the universal falling can’t fall through.

Rainer Maria Rilke

B. O ‘S.

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