I know, it was yesterday, but the parish observes All Saints on this Sunday, and the rector wasn’t well this morning, so after my run and morning shower, coffee, and fruit, I hastened in to St Nic’s for the 8:00 morning Communion for All Saints Day.
I grabbed a sermon I’d preached before, another that draws on the conceit of John Hollander’s ‘The Widener Burying-Ground’, a touchstone for me, on which I drew several years ago in a longer All Souls sermon at Pusey House. With a few localising editorial steps, it did well for the morning (text below the ‘More’ fold), and now I’m sitting at home with the ladies, working on the conclusion of this evening’s All Souls homily for St Helen’s — which will probably draw obliquely on Yeats’s ‘All Souls Night’, because that’s my magpie imagination.
