All Saints' Day

On All Saints' Day this year, we're driving the back roads of Connecticut near where I grew up: back roads in beautiful foliage, back roads because we prefer them, and back roads because of a horrifying tanker truck accident on Interstate 95 that has left several cars crushed and many people dead. So we've headed a bit north, through Montville and Salem and Haddam, where we mail our absentee ballots and pick up postcard stamps; past the Goodspeed Opera House (shown below), a beautiful 19th century icon on the Connecticut River and a popular regional theater; and finally to my Gram's, Mary Endrich's, grave at St. Joseph's Church in Chester, CT. Seems a fitting visit for All Souls'/Saints' Day.

In 2004, we were in Paris for this Catholic holiday, which takes the place of Halloween in France. I wrote the following Letter from Paris at that time, and reprint portions of it here three years later:

November 1, 2004, Letter From Paris, All Saints and Election Days, 2004. Dear family and friends, This is a holiday week in Paris, dominated as it is by churches built hundreds of years ago, a week leading up to today, Tous Saints (All Saint’s) Day. Our own Halloween pays slender homage to this worldwide rite (Dia de las Muertas in Mexico). This week, the dead have been called forth and remembered, with their favorite foods and meditations. Here in France, it is a week for remembering that the joy of life is made possible by our embrace (not denial) of death. This has been a most welcome and meaningful time for Judith and for me. We light many candles for James, most recently departed, but also for my grandmothers, Signe and Mary Elizabeth, and for our many other friends and family members who have crossed over to the other side. We spend much time in the medieval churches lit by these candles, swaddled in incense and organ music, meditating on our own lives and the ways we make a difference in this world in which we are all, living and dying, connected.

We have cast our absentee ballots and await, with much of Europe, the results of tomorrow’s election. While it is easy to vilify Bush and the current administration, I find it more critical and interesting to consider why so many of our fellow citizens support such decisions, rhetoric, and actions: what are the characteristics of U.S. culture which allow us to reward and to applaud such empty leadership? From a distance, we are more acutely able to feel the repercussions of U.S. choices on the world, and to puzzle over the differences in socio-secular-religious cultures from which national politics, and our understanding of them, arise. Like a cold Maine wind on a blue sky January day—the wind that brings tears to your eyes—we have been buffeted by the seeming faithlessness with which we Americans operate in this world.


By “faith” I simply mean a belief that the world is bigger and more coherent than any one or any group (or nation, or company) of us; and, most importantly, that we each play a part in this bigger whole: a faith in and recognition of the beautiful spirit inherent to the world. . .

“What lies beyond the usual is diminished, it is regarded as wasteful and perverse,” states Rudolf Mittwisser, a 1930s professor of religion and German refugee to the U.S., in Cynthia Ozick’s new novel, Heir to the Glimmering World. “What was once valued there [in Europe] is not valued here. Here they lack the European mind, they are small.”

I move around Paris, watching the way Americans travel, carrying their language and customs and expectations with them like coins to be tossed to embittered others we have either rescued or vanquished. In Deer Isle we are also very aware of the way Americans bring our culture with us when we travel, very aware of the means by which many “from away” bring with us self-righteous, self-important beliefs (the best ways to do business, to communicate)—all with the best intentions. Colonialism lives and thrives in the American psyche, which takes pride in its individual prowess and refuses to prioritize or attend to its interconnections to others . . .


We are all connected, and the whole world is watching. I am not separate from my vote or my country, even when I am in opposition to it. And the U.S. is not separate from this world. It is time that we who want our country to make a positive difference in this world take back the language and ACTION of faith, hope, and charity and embue our daily lives with these beliefs. Other views, and our listening to them, matter; strength arises from generosity, and as Americans we are grateful to have so much to give. . .Faith allows us to embrace death and not to fear it; which in turn allows us to open our arms rather than putting up our dukes. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by acting generously.

Along with much of the rest of the world, I wonder: are enough individual Americans strong enough in our beliefs to make a difference tomorrow, in the ways our powerful nation affects the world we share with so many? May the Red Sox victory be an omen for change. Vive l’underdogs, vive l’esperance, vive la change! [2004]