All Souls

Sunday Service, 2 November 2025

Led by Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall

Musical Prelude: Ave Verum – W.A. Mozart (performed by Sophia Kannathasan and Abby Lorimier)  

Opening Words: ‘In the Company of All Souls’ by Lynn Thomas Strauss (adapted)

Today, in our special All Souls service, we bring

and share our memories of loved ones who have died.

Today we share the joys and sorrows

that come with the cycle of the seasons,

for this is the time to remember, to honour,

and to hold the spirit of our loved ones.

Let us truly be here now. Breathe into this moment.

Know that we are in the blessed company of All Souls.

And let the presence of those you have loved fill your heart.

Be strengthened by the guiding hand of the grandparents.

Be nurtured by the compassion of our great-grandparents.

Feel the spirits of the young, who also belong to us, all connected.

And be inspired by the vast company of witnesses here gathered.

Let us hold close all those who have shown us the way.

May our memories be not a burden of sorrow

but a source of joy and renewed spirit.

For we walk where they have walked

and we might carry on their dreams.

May this church be a sanctuary and a resting place.

And may it also be a place of preparation – a place to

learn generosity, gentleness, trust, and integrity.

A place to know that we are blessed.

In that spirit, let us join in worship, together. (pause)

Words of Welcome and Introduction: 

These words from Lynn Thomas Strauss welcome all who have gathered this morning for our Sunday service. Welcome to those who have gathered in-person at Essex Church, to all who are joining us via Zoom, and anyone tuning in at a later date via YouTube or listening to the podcast.  For anyone who doesn’t know me, I’m Jane Blackall, and I’m minister with Kensington Unitarians.

Today is All Souls Day – in the Christian calendar a day of prayer and remembrance ‘for the faithful departed’ – and we’ve made it a regular part of our own church calendar here too. This morning is a chance for us to give special attention to those people we have known and loved who have died. To give thanks for their lives and acknowledge the ways in which our relationship with them goes on beyond physical death. I think the UU minister Victoria Weinstein puts it very well when she says: ‘There is no need to end our relationship with our dead, for they are still ours:  still ours to struggle with, to learn from, and to love. There is no timeline for grieving them and there is no finitude to loving them. Through time – as long a time as it takes – we take their dreams and their desires and their issues and integrate them into our own; we make use of whatever hard-won wisdom they were lucky enough to gain while they lived. We continue to forgive them, if forgiveness is called for. We continue the work of their hands.’

Chalice Lighting: ‘We Gather to Remember’ by Linda Hart

Let’s light our chalice flame now, as we do each week. It’s a moment for us to stop and take a breath, settle ourselves down, put aside any preoccupations we came in carrying. This simple ritual connects us in solidarity with Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists the world over, and reminds us of the proud and historic progressive religious tradition of which this gathering is part.

(light chalice) 

In the dark of the night, around fires, and candlelight,

those of ancient days gone by would pause to remember.

They would remember the names of those now dead,

they would remember the beloved of their lives.

As they once did, this morning we gather, too, to remember.

We celebrate all souls today,

all those who have lived and have died,

the beloved of our lives,

the unnamed who came before us.

As their lives were lit by that of the holy,

by that of the divine that burns within us all,

we kindle the chalice in memory and celebration.

Hymn (on sheet): ‘Living and Dying’

Our first hymn this morning is on your hymn sheet: ‘Living and Dying’. If seeing the notes helps then open up the page.  For those on zoom the words will be up on screen. Stand or sit as you prefer.

Sing of living, sing of dying,

Let them both be joined in one,

Parts of an eternal process

Like the ever-circling sun.

From the freshness of each infant

Giving hope in what is new,

To the wisdom of the aged

Deepened by a longer view.

Open to a deeper loving,

Open to the gift of care,

Searching for a higher justice,

Helping others in despair.

Through the tender bonds of living

In a more inclusive way

We are opened more to suffering

From the losses of each day.

When a special life has ended,

If our lives were interlaced,

We are carried into darkness

By that presence unreplaced.

Standing at the edge of meaning

Struggling to be free from pain,

Wondering if our hearts will ever

Dare to fill with love again.

Even when our grief o’erwhems us

And our aching hearts seem lost,

Life is dancing all around us,

Even while it counts the cost.

Slowly in our inner darkness,

Love may light the saddened will,

Giving us a way to see that

Life has meaning for us still.

Candles of Joy and Concern: 

Each week when we gather together, we share a simple ritual of candles of joy and concern, an opportunity to light a candle and share something that is in our heart with the community. So we’ve an opportunity now, for anyone who would like to do so, to light a candle and say a few words about what it represents. We’ll go to the people in the building first, then to Zoom.

So I invite some of you here in person to come and light a candle and then if you wish to tell us who or what you light your candle for – please keep it brief – be considerate of others. I’m going to ask you to come to the lectern to speak, as we want people to be able to hear you. 

(in person candles)  

And if that’s everyone in the room we’ll go over to the people on Zoom next – you might like to switch to gallery view at this stage – just unmute yourselves when you are ready and speak out – and we should be able to hear you and see you up on the big screen here in the church.

(zoom candles)  

And I’m going to light one more candle, as we often do, to represent all those joys and concerns that we hold in our hearts this day, but which we don’t feel able to speak out loud. (light candle)

Time of Prayer & Reflection: based on words by Linda Hart

Let’s take those joys and concerns into an extended time of prayer. This prayer is based on some words by Linda Hart. You might want to adjust your position for comfort, close your eyes, or soften your gaze. There might be a posture that helps you feel more prayerful. Whatever works for you. Do whatever you need to do to get into the right state of body and mind for us to pray together – to be fully present here and now, in this sacred time and space – with ourselves, with each other, and with that which is both within us and beyond us.

Spirit of Life, God of All Love, in whom we live and move and have our being,

   we turn our full attention to you, the light within and without,

      as we tune in to the depths of this life, and the greater wisdom

         to which – and through which – we are all intimately connected.

      Be with us now as we allow ourselves to drop into the

         silence and stillness at the very centre of our being. (pause)

We gather here this day to remember.

To remember those who have touched

our lives by their living and their dying.

Blessed be their lives, and our memories of them.

We stand in the presence of a mystery, that life is,

that we know the pleasures of family and friends,

that we can celebrate the gentle joys of community and companionship.

That we have breath, is a mystery. That we live, is itself a mystery. 

In the presence of these memories,

these spirits who still touch our lives,

let us open our hearts in thanksgiving.

Thankful for their presence in our lives,

thankful for the blessing of time that was ours to share

with these friends, loved ones, partners, companions.

Let us open our hearts with gratitude for all they have given to us,

and let that gratitude spill over the loss that we feel,

let it fill that which is left empty within us.

Gratitude for all the gifts, living on here

in these tokens, in our hearts, in our lives.

Let us open our hearts in thanksgiving

for those who still grace our lives.

Our time is too short to be taken with

petty disagreements and angry divisions.

Our time is too short to hold our love within.

Let us open our hearts to those around us,

for the treasures that they may yield in our lives.

And let us open our hearts to those around us

for the treasures they may find within us too,

that precious and wondrous spark of life that we each embody.

The world is more mystery than not,

and we are ever in the presence of gifts beyond measure.

In the quiet of our time together, may we reach to touch

that treasure, that giftedness, and may we return to our lives

with a new sense of kindness and care, of gentle love

and compassion for those who fill our lives. (pause)

And in a good few moments of shared silence and stillness now,

may we speak inwardly some of those deepest prayers of our hearts,

reaching out in faith and hope to the One Who Holds All.

Let us each lift up whatever is on our heart this day –

our struggles, our questions, our dreams –

and ask for what we most need. (long pause)  

Spirit of Life – God of all Love – as this time of prayer comes to a close, we offer up

   our joys and concerns, our hopes and fears, our beauty and brokenness,

      and we call on you for insight, healing, and renewal.

As we look forward now to the coming week,

     help us to live well each day and be our best selves;

     using our unique gifts in the service of love, justice and peace. Amen.

In-Person Reading: ‘For the Living’ by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (read by Sonya)

It is the work of the living

to grieve the dead.

It is our work to wake each day,

to live into the world that is.

It is our work to weep,

and it is our work to be healed.

Some part of us knows

not only the absence of our beloveds,

but also their presence,

how they continue to teach us,

how they invite us to grow.

It is our work to be softened by loss,

to be undone, destroyed, remade.

Wounded, we recoil,

and it is our work to notice how,

like crushed and trampled grass,

we spring back.

It is our work to meet death again

and again and again,

and though it aches to be open,

it is our work to be opened,

to live into the opening

until we know ourselves

as blossoms nourished from within

by the radiance of the ones

who are no longer physically here.

They have given us their love light to carry.

It is our work to be in service to that light.

Hymn (on sheet): ‘In Sorrow We Remember’

Let’s sing again – our second hymn is also on your hymn sheet – ‘In Sorrow We Remember’. It’s to an old hymn tune which I think many of us will already know.

In sorrow we remember the loved ones we have lost.

As love bestows its blessings, it also brings a cost.

The joy we felt so deeply is now the deepest pain.

In sorrow we remember and say their names again.

In sorrow we remember our neighbours who are gone.

However well we knew them, our thoughts of them live on.

Their lives and ours were tangled, however loose the skein.

In sorrow we remember and say their names again.

Oh, may our hearts be opened to everything we feel.

Our sadness and our wonder we hold as true and real.

In faith and trust we honour the power of our grief.

In sorrow we remember a love beyond belief.

In-Person Reading: ‘A Better Place’ by James Crews (read by Roy)

They are in a better place, we say,

but what if the dead still exist in a world

that is inside this one, living on as the tiny

glimmer I see in the air around me when I

think of my mother’s smile or the streetlight

blinking on, shuddering into brightness

as I pass beneath, remembering my father

coming home from work, his rusty truck

bumping along the driveway. What if they

live on in the small face of the wild daisy

and the red breast of the robin lingering

outside my window, pecking at mulch,

pulling a shining worm from loose soil.

What if, as others promise me, my parents

still live in my heart, having taken over

those few rooms, both of them now seated

at a table in the centre, laughing again,

their hands wrapped around cups of coffee

whose heat I can feel spreading in my chest

on those days when I miss them the most. (pause)

James Crews offers some reflections on his own poem:

We might grow weary and impatient with the comforts others try to offer us in times of loss. They might say that our loved ones are in heaven now, in a better place, dancing with angels. They might say that our loved ones are everywhere now. No matter how true these words may feel, they can strike us in the moment as insensitive or hollow. We do not necessarily want to be eased out of the grief we need to feel so that it may pass through. Besides, to imply that the one we have lost is all around us now is no real comfort at all – not when we crave their actual touch, the sound of their voice, their physical presence on Earth again. This poem sprang out of my own weariness, having heard one too many times that my mother and father must now live in my heart. I began writing with the intention of sharing some of the odd and mysterious ways they are indeed still with me. The tiny glimmers I see when I am thinking about my mother – her smile, her laughter, her tears. Or the way, in the years after my father’s death, I’d be walking beneath streetlights only to have them flicker on quite suddenly as I was filed with the sense that he was near me.

But I was surprised by an image that came to me, of my late parents actually living inside the few rooms of my heart, perhaps chatting over steaming cups of coffee, laughing together again. This image offered me far more solace than any of the well-meaning words uttered by others, as if by imagining my parents together again within me I had somehow made it true. A shift in my grief then occurred, which allowed me to relax and release a little. Perhaps my parents were reunited with each other after only twenty years apart, now held inside my heart. The image also reminded me of a favourite quote by the poet Nikita Gill: “You have turned your heart into a museum of people you’ve loved to keep them alive inside you.” We can’t know much for sure about the afterlife, but we can keep our loved ones vibrantly alive inside us, in both heart and mind, by deciding to stay open to the many ways they will surely walk with us in the years to come.

Words for Meditation: ‘Alive in our Hearts’

We’re moving into a time of meditation now. As we move into a few minutes of stillness and silence I’m going to invite you to reflect on that line from Nikita Gill: ‘You have turned your heart into a museum of people you’ve loved to keep them alive inside you’. And more broadly that notion that those we’ve loved live on in our hearts – whether they’ve died recently – or if they died many years ago – they still live on in us. Those of you who are here in the church building should have a heart in your order of service – if you’re at home please do just draw a big heart on a piece of paper – and  I simply invite you to write down in this heart anything that comes up for you during the meditation – the names of loved ones you want to remember – or words that evoke special memories of them that you want to keep in your inner museum. After a few minutes of silence we’ll hear the bell. Then we’ll hear music for meditation. So let’s do what we need to do to get comfortable – maybe adjust your position – put your feet flat on the floor to ground yourself – close your eyes. As we always say, the words – this activity – is just an offering, feel free to use this time to meditate in your own way.

Period of Silence and Stillness (~3 minutes) – end with a bell  

Interlude: Abide with Me – W.H. Monk (performed by Sophia Kannathasan and Abby Lorimier)  

In-Person Reading: ‘We Celebrate All Souls’ by Kristin Schmidt (read by Antony)

In a world of winners and losers,

successes and failures,

right and wrong,

It’s easier to celebrate the saints;

Religion’s moral medallists and heroes.

It’s easier to celebrate the saints,

Those of haloed heads and storied myths,

Those whose true selves few, if any, can recall,

Their humanity obscured by carefully crafted image

Documented miracles shining down

from pedestals built far too high.

It’s easier to celebrate the saints,

And plenty of saints are worth celebrating,

Truly, exemplars extraordinaire.

But today, we celebrate All Souls.

All souls.

All of the souls.

Every single one.

The sweet and the grating,

The loved and the hated,

The cherished and the neglected,

The valued and the exploited,

The exalted and the lowly.

All souls, whether they were saints or not.

All souls, because all life is one.

Spirit of Life and Death and Change and Transformation,

Spirit that is always Becoming,

Mystery beyond all naming,

Yet who is closer than hands and feet,

And who calls us each beloved,

We give thanks

That today is set aside for us to remember

Not only our ancestors,

Not only our saints,

Not only our family,

Not only our friends and acquaintances and neighbours;

We give thanks for this one day a year that bids us remember

the entirety of humanity,

The whole history of conscious life

That lived and died and brought us to

this era,

this moment,

this breath.

We give thanks for a day to be honest

To be real

About the complex feelings that can bubble up when people die

A day to remember that we are bound to all of humanity

All of the souls

Not by blood or rank or status,

Not by political party or religion or place of birth,

But by our common humanity.

All of the souls.

All sacred.

All holy.

All one.

In the name of all that we find holy. Amen.

INTERACTIVE Sharing for All Souls: Honouring our Beloved Dead

We’ve come to a time in our service to mark All Souls with a simple ritual to honour the memory of those we have loved who have died. As UU minister Carl Seaburg said: ‘this day is set apart in many churches for the commemoration of those ‘holy souls’ who have graced our lives and passed from our living circle.  Their radiance, their works, their memories, are still with us – and on this day we meet to celebrate them fondly.  Thoughtfully, too, remembering that we also someday shall follow where they went.’

We’ve got about ten minutes for our ritual and we’ll do this in a similar way to the Candles of Joy and Concern – I’ll invite the people in the room first – then the people on Zoom. As ever it’s an invitation not an obligation – there’s no pressure. By default we will leave this bit in the recording of the service, so if you join in but don’t want to be included in the video that goes on YouTube, have a word with me or drop me an email to let me know straight after the service and I’ll make sure to edit you out.

So for the people in the room, please come up when you’re ready, make sure you come to the microphone, speak the name of the person you want to remember, and just a sentence to acknowledge and honour them, and then please do light a heart-shaped candle in their memory. You are welcome to name more than one person, but be aware of how long you’re speaking, so that everyone who wants to join in can have be heard in the time we’ve got. Sadly we won’t have time to hear more of your shared story during the service but these conversations can always continue afterwards.

(in person ritual)

And if that’s everyone in the room we’ll go over to the people on Zoom next – we’re going to do this slightly differently than usual – when you’re ready to speak please put your hand up and Ramona will spotlight you when she sees you. When it invites you to unmute please do so and please go ahead and speak – say the name of the person you want to remember, and how you were connected to them in just a word or two. And we’ll light a heart-shaped candle for you here in the church.

(zoom ritual)

If that’s everyone… thank you for joining in with our All Souls Ritual. 

Let’s close it with a blessing – just a few words from Leia Durland-Jones. 

For those who came before us,

we offer gratitude and thanks.

May their memories be a blessing.

May we feel surrounded by their love.

Let us be inspired by their courage,

their wisdom, and their dreams.

And let us honour them by doing the work

of living boldly, loving mightily, and

helping create heaven on earth. Amen.

Hymn 44 (purple): ‘Give Thanks for Life’

Let’s sing again, one last time, and it’s number 44 in your purple book, ‘Give Thanks for Life’.

Give thanks for life, the measure of our days,

mortal, we pass through beauty that decays,

yet sing to God our hope, our love, our praise:

Alleluia, Alleluia!

Give thanks for those whose lives shone with a light

caught from the Christ-flame, gleaming through the night,

who touched the truth, who burned for what is right:

Alleluia, Alleluia!

Give thanks for all, our living and our dead,

thanks for the love by which our life is fed,

a love not changed by time or death or dread:

Alleluia, Alleluia!

Give thanks for hope that like a seed of grain

lying in darkness, does its life retain

to rise in glory, growing green again:

Alleluia, Alleluia!

Announcements:

Thanks to Ramona for hosting and Shari for co-hosting. Thanks to Abby, Sophia and Andrew for lovely music today – as ever – and Benjie for supporting our singing. Thanks to Sonya, Roy, and Antony for reading. Thanks to Patricia for greeting and David for making coffee. If you are in-person do stay for cake and a chat (I’ve made berry lime drizzle cake this week). And if you’re online please do stay for a chat with Shari or maybe drop me a line to say hello.

Tonight and Friday at 7pm we’ve got our ‘Heart and Soul’ online contemplative spiritual gathering – this week our theme is ‘Paying Attention’ – email me if you want to join us and I’ll share the link. This is a really good way to get to know members of the congregation more deeply so I especially commend it to you if you’re someone who attends online as it’s a bit more interactive.

The poetry group meets this Wednesday evening at 7pm – talk to Brian if you’re planning to come.

Sonya is back with Nia Dance from this coming Friday at 12.30pm.

The Better World Book Club is reading ‘The Transgender Issue’ by Shon Faye this month (meeting on 30^th November). We’ve got a couple of copies left to loan out if you want to join us.

Next Sunday it’s our Remembrance Sunday service so make sure you get here early so we can observe the traditional time of silence promptly at 11am.

And as the year rolls on I wanted to draw your attention to a number of special events and activities coming up in December – we have a tea dance on the 7^th December, a midwinter labyrinth meditation on the 17^th, our big carol service and lunch on the 21^st, and our candlelit Christmas Eve. I’d personally appreciate your support of these events and anything you can do to spread the word. It’s a bit unnerving to go to town on organising an event and having no idea who’s going to turn up!

Details of all our various activities are printed on the back of the order of service, for you to take away, and also in the Friday email.  The congregation very much has a life beyond Sunday mornings; we encourage you to keep in touch, look out for each other, and do what you can to nurture supportive connections. Just time for our closing words and closing music now.  

Benediction: based on words by Simon John Barlow

in this season of gathering-in and remembrance:

we remember, in gratitude, all those who came before

us to prepare the paths which we now tread;

we remember, in love, our family members, friends, and lovers

who, though not with us today, still guide our footsteps;

we remember, in awe, the miracles of daily life

which inspire us and raise our spirits;

we remember, in joy, the love divine and human

which surrounds us always;

we remember, in peace, the divine light within us all

which brings the strength for growth;

we remember, in acceptance, our task of sharing that

inner light with all around us wherever we go. Amen.

Closing Music: Amazing Grace (performed by Sophia Kannathasan and Abby Lorimier)  

Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall

2nd November 2025